


Pseudomnesia

by Greyingdawns



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-05-13 17:46:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 85,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5711368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greyingdawns/pseuds/Greyingdawns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alcor wakes one day to find himself back in the Mystery Shack as if the Transcendence (and all that followed) never happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blocking

**Author's Note:**

> _**Blocking** \- The temporary inaccessibility of information that is stored in memory._

_"Loose grip on gravity falls,_  
_sky blinding, crumbling walls,_  
_river sweep away my memories of_  
_children’s things…”_

\-  CocoRosie

***

                    **??**

_GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out_  -

                                                                    ** _I̷̡̠͕̝̝͉͖͘͝͡ͅ want IT fucking Ģ̴̤̟̤̺͚̜͔͚͇̙̹̫ͅͅONE̶̻̺̤̻̤̞͖̤̟̲̰̦̰̩͝_**

 

**30 seconds**

It had seemed his fall would go on for an eternity, so the ultimate landing is awfully more jarring for it. Sensation does not so much return to him as come crashing in, like a dislocation being yanked back into position.

For a moment or two he is perfectly content to just lie there on the floor, waiting for the panic and pulsatile tinnitus to subside. He tries to take deep breaths to speed this process. They catch in his throat. He tastes stomach acid.

A sluggish parade of realizations follow one after the other. The incessant pull of gravity is keeping him anchored to the ground (a fact for which he is grateful at the moment). Breathing is non-negotiable. What he can see of the world has been drastically limited to that which lies just before his eyes.

These facts initially refuse to add up into more meaningful information; each simply strikes him as absurd. He'd laugh if he weren't so winded.

Nonetheless his eyes refocus, staring up from where he's fallen, and find a familiar pitched ceiling. Sure it's been quite some time, but he's spent more than enough sleepless nights looking up at that to burn it into memory.

It takes him a heartbeat (he has one of those?) to put it all together and bolt upright, in spite of his body's protesting.

The world is dark outside the window of the attic bedroom, but there's a lamp on the desk below doing its best to provide decent illumination for him. Enough to read by comfortably, judging by the book lying on the floor beside him, pages splayed from his tumble out of bed.

_Concerning the Curious Case of the Mysterious Disappearance of the Lost Secret Society_  by Jenkins W. Jenkins. He vaguely remembers that one being a little disappointing, the identity of the ultimate villain of the piece too predictable.

But more importantly, it shouldn't be here.

None of the usual detritus of his childhood summers currently cluttering up the room should (and oh wow, he wasn't  _this_  messy back then, was he?). Everything about this situation is wrong, in fact.

He finally scrambles up to his feet, stumbling over to take a look in the standing mirror on the other side of the room to confirm his suspicions. Not only is he corporeal, but a completely ordinary human visage greets his eyes, not a pointed ear or twitching shadow to be found.

And not only is he human, but he appears so much younger. The age he'd been his last summer of life, no doubt; that elusive true form of his unfortunate cultists didn't take too seriously. He's even wearing the outfit he had had on when It happened, the same shorts and jacket he once wore practically every day. Apparently he'd fallen asleep without having gotten to changing into his pajamas.

He doesn't know what else he was expecting to see. He feels he had already known as much, with the kind of groundless certainty only felt in dreams.

He makes a face in the mirror to be doubly sure. No fangs.

Stretches an eyelid. Nothing abnormal about the eyes either.

Attempts to summon blue flame, curl the shadows into terrifying shapes and set them upon the lamplight. Nothing.

He hazards a sideways glance to see how the version of himself from alt-uni 518 is taking this; maybe he knows what's going on (he knows that's "cheating", but he is a demon after all). All he sees is the open closet door and the dirty clothes piled inside. Yeah, that was a bit of a long shot at this point.

He casts his mind back to what he was doing just before he... what, exactly? Fell asleep? Fell out of bed?

<…>

It was... there was something...

Something important...

Just there. He can nearly touch it.

<…>

He decides he does not want to think about it right now. It is giving him a migraine. Later.

Instead he explores, takes inventory. This was That Summer, sure, but he needs more than that. He needs an explanation.

The board above his bed on which he'd once organized clues is missing. The many, many cameras he'd bought and his collection of "photographic evidence", only a tenth of which actually featured anything supernatural, also missing.

He lifts his pillow, discovers no journal.

There has to be something here that can help him get his bearings. Something to set his watch to, keep a lid on any panic that might resurface once the disorientation ran its course.

He ventures downstairs as quietly as he can manage, trying not to step on or lean against anything that might creak. A difficult feat in this old place. He checks out a certain vending machine, inputs a certain code. When nothing happens, he puts his ear near the wall and knocks as loudly as he dares. Not even a tell-tale hollow space behind it.

He steps outside, sees nothing out of place about the shack and its surroundings from what he can perceive in the darkness (you know, it'd been a standard trick to pull on his more selfish summoners when he was too lazy to do real damage, stealing all the light from the room and listening to their pulses quicken, watching them scramble around in abject terror; gotta say, it isn't nearly so funny being burdened with the weakness again himself).

He walks out a ways, once more unsure what it is he expects to find. Perhaps the edge that proved this to be some odd floating island of recollection deep in the mindscape (not that it would explain his vanished powers). Whatever it is, he is disappointed.

 ...

There is a lump beneath the covers in the bed across from his. It's been there this entire time, really, it's just becoming more difficult to disregard. He avoids turning his eyes that direction as he returns to his (old) bed to lie down. The lump is just another thing wrong with this picture, for more reasons than one. That same force keeping him from lingering too long on the events of the recent past steers him violently away from contemplating the consequences of his recently departed sister's presence here.

His mind rushes to put together what few pieces he does have, but there are far too many holes in the puzzle to see a definite picture forming. Doesn't help that none of the old sources he'd had to work with when he was alive are anywhere to be found. The vast ocean of knowledge in which he was suspended that he once referred to as "ALL THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE", always leaking in without warning whenever he reflexively took a breath (psychically speaking of course, but no not quite), this too was gone; he could no longer sense it sitting ominously just there, beyond his immediate consciousness.

For the first time in years, unanswered questions whizz around in his head like bees, just as difficult to swat away. How could he be  _here_  of all times and places? An alternate timeline perhaps? But then where is the version of himself who lives here? Was this part of a dare, a deal? He couldn't think of many powers great enough to banish him outright.

He does not get much further than that. Lying down to think was a bad idea. His eyelids weigh more than he thought possible for things so small and he realizes just how tired he really feels. It's like he hasn't slept in days. To be fair, it's been much longer than that.

Maybe if he just goes back to sleep, all this will fade away again like the dreams he knows as a demon he is incapable of experiencing.

This is the last coherent thought of Dipper Pines before unconsciousness.

 

**** **.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_“Sure you don’t need to see a doctor?” Mabel asks._ <for the seventh time>

_“Why, so they can hand him two ibuprofen and send him right back home to get some rest?” Stan grunts groggily from his chair, not bothering to open his eyes. Stan, who should be the one being harassed into going to the hospital. Dipper saw the size of the gash across his forehead when the old man changed his bandages this morning._ <he hadn’t been as near to the magical explosion as Dipper had been>

_“I’m fine, Mabel. Really,” Dipper assures his sister_ <for the seventh time> _, trying hard not to stare at the growing cloud of orange_ <worry> _enveloping her. He wonders if his own fears are so obvious, wonders if that's why she keeps asking._

_He doesn't want to know what would happen if he was taken to the hospital. Luckily, no one can force him; he was the only one caught in the blast not to sustain major injury._ _Visible injury, that is._

_Ice clear spikes of useless terror pierce through his heart and shatter into lingering splinters every time he thinks about what sort of damage the colors or the interference buzzing away in his ears could be indicating. He gets these... flashes... too, can feel another one coming up right now, they always build like waves before they crash down over him (holding his breath doesn't help, he's tried). Never retains any of what he sees, goes too quickly to understand, and then it's draining out of him again like water through a sieve. Too real to be nightmares, too nonsensical to be imagined. Impossible to ignore._

<not enough space> <making room>

_This... whatever it is. It has to wear off sometime, right?_ <…> _No need to tell anyone just yet. They'd just worry about it. And they've worried enough for now, let them be relieved a little longer._ <she waited up all night for him to come back> <she hadn’t known for certain he ever would come back> <but she wasn’t going to say goodnight to an empty bed>

_Mabel frowns and continues petting a snoozing Waddles, unconvinced._ <no different from the last six times> <no different from the next four> _How long until she asks again?_

<12 minutes>

 

`<"It's yours now.">`

`<incorrect>`

`<you will have to swallow it first>`

 

**** **6 hours**

The lump beneath the covers doesn’t stay still for long. It never does.

It shakes him and he growls in complaint, throwing an arm up to shield his eyes in denial of the morning light. He is just noting faintly that he doesn’t sound as menacing as usual when the shape barrels into him, snapping him back into his present predicament.

“Dipper if we don’t get downstairs RIGHT NOW Grunkle Stan’s gonna get to the good cereal first!”

...

After a little more impatient coaxing from his sister, Dipper follows her down the stairs, entering the kitchen just in time to witness a young Stan (well, young in Dipper’s view at least) pouring the last few pentagram shapes into a bowl of milk.

“Nooooooooo...” Mabel whispers, making a show of falling to the floor and beating it softly with a fist in defeat, eyes downcast.

“You know the rules, you two. You snooze, you lose,” Stan mumbles through a mouth full of Golden Penta-Grahams.

Mabel looks up at her Great Uncle accusingly. He swallows. “Hey, it’s not like it’s my fault they’re sacri-licious.”

Although he can’t yet be sure what he’s dealing with, Dipper swears if this turns out to be some sort of trick, the perpetrator is going to pay dearly for dangling this is front of him, the likeness of those who’d once been his two favorite people in the world.

Outwardly he smiles, says, “Mabel it’s alright, I’ll just make us something. I mean it is my fault we got down here so late, right?”

Mabel continues to sulk on the floor, hair covering her eyes now, lying face down. Stan can barely contain his laughter.

“Look, no offense kid, but I don’t think you offering to make macaroni for breakfast is gonna get her hopes up too high,” Stan says, risking a sip of coffee.

Dipper bristles a little at that. “I can totally make breakfast.” And he had. Loads of times. He strides to the refrigerator, determined to prove a point.

 

**** **6 hours, 10 minutes**

Dipper stirs the pasta on the stove while his sister continues to pout at the table. It’d taken a couple minutes to work out a way to pick her up and sit her there, but at least now she isn’t on the floor.

Okay, he knew for a fact he could make peanut butter and banana french toast pancakes, that he’d made them before. So why when he’d gone to actually do so couldn’t he remember exactly how to go about it, what to do first? Must just not have everything he needs. That was it, had to be.

 

**** **12 hours**

His sister is watching him in that way that means she is expecting an explanation. He offers none, pretending to be too invested in his search to notice her staring. Tiger Fist coming back from the commercial break distracts her again soon enough, mercifully granting him yet another extension before the inevitable interrogation.

The date on the newspaper is early; they had been staying with their Great Uncle Stan for little more than a week. Dipper had looked over every page twice. No mention of anything remotely supernatural beyond the usual ridiculous theories; the weirdest thing he discovers is an ad for whiskey toothpaste where he’d expected the ad for the upcoming Tent of Telepathy.

This is going to be tougher than he thought.

 

**** **14 hours**

Mabel Pines finally speaks up when she catches him clearing space in their bedroom. "Bro, are you seriously so bored here you're going to  _clean_?"

Dipper ignores her to step out of the room, returning in no time with an armful of blank paper from the busted copier in Stan’s office (which, to his disappointment, had appeared to be utterly ordinary). He begins carefully laying down the overlapping pieces.

"Maybe you were right, there is something spooky going on here. You can't hear or see me, so maybe I'm turning into a ghost?" she suggests, gesticulating for dramatic effect. Dipper smiles at that despite himself as he starts to draw the foundations of his summoning circle.

It isn't effortless as it should be. Before, he simply Knew what was needed, no matter how complex the circle grew over the years as his power increased. Now he pauses every few minutes to put a hand to his chin and look over the whole thing contemplatively. Was that right? What order did the symbols go in again?

"Just tell me what kind of nerd thing this is, I  _promise_  I won't laugh  _that_  hard."

"Summoning circle," he answers honestly, as though it were unremarkable, frowning at his wavy lines. He wasn’t the best artist, granted, but it should practically draw itself.

"Oooooh, that's a new one. Whatsit for?" she asks, eyes on the project now, adopting a similar thoughtful pose to her twin.

Dipper shrugs. He hasn't looked up. "Science. Testing a theory and all that."

"You know, my hands are a lot steadier than yours."

 ...

"You kids wanna eat out tonight?" Stan says, poking his head through the doorway. His clothes are singed, still smoking even, and his eyes are watering behind his glasses. He coughs twice before continuing. "Had a little accident in the kitchen working on my new smoke bombs, gotta air out the place."

The twins look up at their great uncle from drawing a pine tree and shooting star respectively, the final symbols in the elaborate summoning circle now spanning the room's available floor space, candles at every juncture.

A brief pause follows, during which everyone stares at one another. Dipper fishes for the words to break it, but every half-formed explanation he comes up with dies on his tongue before it can be voiced. Can't be sure what's safe.

Then Stan lowers his voice. "Listen, you guys uh, need somethin' for that, take the goat. Little pest's been after my hat for years, nobody'd miss 'im. I'm gonna go start the car."

 

**** **16 hours**

The diner looks much the same. There’s syrup stains on the corner of the table from when they’d been serving breakfast and the nearly inaudible sound system has been playing “What doesn’t kill you” on repeat since they came in (it has Dipper feeling nostalgic, in an irritated sort of way).

The waitress doesn’t know a Lazy Susan.

She knows a Sufficiently Hard-working Susan, her mother, but she doesn’t work here.

Dipper jots a few things down on a napkin for the purposes of his investigation. Then the food arrives and Stan tells him to stow it.

 

**** **18 hours**

Dipper draws a line through the header 'Displacement Theory' in his new spiral notebook, the one onto which he’d traced an outline of his hand as a joke to himself. This wasn’t going to be fixed as easily as summoning himself, it seems. It doesn't help that this iteration of Gravity Falls might as well be named Boring, Oregon; not so much as a fairy repeatedly slamming itself into the nearest light source to be found all day. At least they wouldn't have to worry about unfriendly gnomes trying to steal their kidneys in their sleep.

He glances at the timer on his wrist that he, uh, borrowed from Stan's office earlier and dutifully takes down the time. Either he's slipping up or all this goes beyond a mere illusion; he's sure he would have noticed some spacial or temporal anomaly by now. No flux in the gravity, nobody clipping through any walls. There's a lot of detail to the clutter and peeling wallpaper around the shack, too; he's managed to sketch a lot of the place and periodically visits to check whether everything is still exactly where it'd been. Tough to make something that maintains this level of realistic consistency, he should know. He'll give it another day before he crosses that page out, just to be thorough.

The 'Discrepancies' page is next to be updated. Section 3: Vending Machine. '3 - C - B - 1 - A' goes in the Input column, 'Gelatin Skeletons' under Results.

Moves on to 'Personal Evaluation'. Oh boy. He's been holding off on this one. 'How does he feel?' Normal mostly. Normal's weird. Can't remember the last time he had a body. Man, he's exhausted. And why? Hardly done anything to it yet. Wishes he could return the 'things take actual effort' part of the experience.

Doesn't write any of that down though. That's not what the question meant, he was stalling. Doesn't feel any different, honestly; no more 'human' than ~~before~~ , if human is a feeling to begin with. Beginning to doubt it. Wouldn't be inconsistent; he hadn't felt anything when he changed back then neither. Unless pain counts. Been forever and a day, but his breath hitches just thinking about it. Tastes copper. He turns the page, switches gears immediately; he knows how to cope with mistakes like that.

He starts a new page to brainstorm what spells might still work with S.A. levels as low as they appear to be, gets as far as the header before Mabel challenges him to a game of Monotony and calls dibs on the thimble as she sets up the board.

He looks from the game to the makeshift journal, then back. He ultimately sets the notebook aside and hops down to claim the hat as his game piece (was there any doubt?).

It isn’t as if he’s in a hurry here, right? ~~No not at all~~. One game can't hurt.

 

**** **.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_“Dipper, google something for me.”_

_“It’s not google," he says automatically, knowing how much good it would do. As natural as his fledgling powers felt to him, he doesn’t_ trust _that feeling._

_“How long would my cardboard boat last in the race tomorrow?” Mabel asks, gesturing to her entry with obvious pride. It was just the size for her, constructed primarily from old corrugated mailing boxes she’d discovered piled near the dumpster. It had a googly-eyed sea serpent at the prow and she wore a cartoonish viking helmet and cardboard shield to match it._

_He glances at it over the top of his book and instantly knows this to be a mistake. He feels the word vomit coming, can feel it start to set his teeth tingling like he’s been chewing raw toothpaste._ <the boat would start to leak in 343 seconds> <the boat would start to sink in 494 seconds> <the boat would be submerged in 562 seconds> <the boat would be devoured whole by the - >

_Mabel quickly raises her hands. “Woah bro, tmi.”_

_Had he said some of that out loud? Whoops._

_“Guess it still needs work, no big deal. I bet Soos will know how to fix it up, boats aren’t that different from golf carts right? They both like, take you places.”_ _She turns to leave._ _He grabs her arm._

_Dipper had been five feet away, but now he is close. Very close._

_And his eyes are bright. Very bright._

_They don’t quite focus as they meet hers._

_His nails dig in painfully, but do not draw blood._

_“Hold ̡ųp͡, I ̢ju͡s̡t h́a͢d͟ ̶th́e co̧o̕le͢st i͠d͞ea.́”_

 

`<<at this rate> you are going to hurt yourself>`

`<you <don't> <won't> believe that <but it is true>>`

 

**** **30 hours**

Dipper is standing in the shower, motionless, with his face turned into the stream so that the freezing water pounds directly against his eyelids. He wonders how you’re supposed to tell when the shower’s finished. He is pretty sure he is doing this correctly.

He can hear Mabel banging on the door, but she isn’t getting in here until he’s figured this out. She’s always teasing that he needs to shower more, well, wish granted.

 

**** **32 hours**

 Revisits 'Discrepancies'.

The third journal isn't where it was. There wasn't even a hidden compartment for it to be stashed in.

Adds a note on a whim: _possible human_ _error_. (Ha.) He hadn't been completely confident he had the right spot. May be misremembering where he found it all that time ago. Misremembering a lot lately (might warrant its own entry? demon to human, there's gotta be side-effects). He'd mapped out where the hatch was in the journal itself before, of course, but that fact isn't proving particularly useful right about now.

Will try out spells next (should be innate).

Note: change timestamp format. He might be here a while.

 

**** **34 hours (getting to it)**

Mabel teases him for dozing off on the couch during the "Best Part!!!" of the episode, but he can't help it. He hasn't been able to sleep, like really truly sleep, for 95 years.

He doesn't understand why he didn't do it more often when he was alive, naps kick ass.

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**  

_“Oh,” Dipper whispers, and he feels his stubborn grip on reality loosen by another finger._ <about time he realized>

_“Dude, don’t look now, but you’re phasin’ through the car.” His sister’s voice never fails to reach him when he spaces out, happens so often these days._ <still too much> <requires a powerful will to wield>

_He looks down to find this is indeed the case; his body_ <projection> _has sunk down partially through the worn material of the seat. Dipper tries to find some purchase with which to pull himself up, but his hands pass through the car door and seat in front of him without resistance._

_“Okay...” Dipper mutters, because it's not okay and he doesn't know where to begin to address that._

_There’s a thump as the trunk is closed; their parents have finished transferring their luggage from Angel’s_ <not her name <her name is not important>> _car._

[ _He hasn’t stopped thinking about that moment since they’d met her earlier._

_Angel tapping on the window not minutes (seconds?) after they’d broken down on the side of the road (had they even fully come to a stop?). The warmth of her expression as she shouted a greeting over the roar of the wind. The way their car shook as trucks and RVs swept past not three feet from them. The way Angel did not shake, did not even spare a backward glance for the danger._

_“You guys need some help?”_ ]

_Serendipity, right?_

_But that doesn’t fit the punch in the gut he’d gotten when her eyes briefly met his. It was more like_

<fingers reaching through just as the elevator door is closing><bus pulling up just as the rain begins to fall>

<winning numbers comprised of loved ones’ birthdays><”Haven’t seen you in years!”>

<fingers snapping, “Yeah, that was it…”><long lost loose-ends brought together>

<the right answer circled at the last second><”What are the odds?”>

_And then Mabel had said..._

_had said, just a moment ago..._

<"Wow, she's like, an angel! Don't you think?">

_Mabel reaches a finger out to poke him._ <<"For science."> she's thinking <"Or um, at least whatever science word they call 'studying magic' now.">> _It makes contact easily enough._

_“Ow.”_

_“That hurt?” she asks._

_“No, just wasn’t expecting it,” he answers._

_She offers her hand then, and he takes it, lets her pull him up and out of the seat. He bobs in the air just above it now, ignoring an entirely different aspect of physics, but he feels better_ <dignified> _nonetheless. Less... disoriented? Grateful that someone's here to ground him while he rides out this sudden out-of-body experience thing._

<stuck like this <for> now> <there's no 'un-knowing' it> _Oh. Oh no._ _But then. How had he - ?_ <he could only stay physical before because he hadn't known> <magic at rest> <no putting out that fire now that it's stoked> <the arrow of time faces toward entropy>

_Outside, their parents are talking to Angel about something, but he cannot hear it._ <wrapping up> <thanking her profusely> <less than five minutes> <he needs to tell Mabel now> _He isn't sure whether that's due to normal reasons (because they're inside the car, too far away) or on him (because the demon shit keeps distracting him)._ <the latter>

_“Are you like, doing this on purpose?” Mabel gestures vaguely to all of her brother._ <not referring to the spacing out> <referring to the intangibility> <she's wondering if he's practicing a spell> _"Cuz if you know how to go ghost, I wanna try, don't hold out on me."_

_Should he start from the beginning, tell her he's the one who caused the breakdown because he's nervous about going back home?_ <<no need> she already knows> <she is not ready to leave either>

_“No. It’s just… I uh... sort of figured out what I am just now.”_ <Not Angel>

_“A huge dork?”_

_“A demon.”_

_Like how Bill was._ <…>

 

`<that is not how it happened <exactly>>`

`<he has visited this one too many times <but he does not need to Know <what he already knows <you know>>>>`

`<he's burnt questions into the fabric of it <brighter than the memory itself <they set off cerulean sparks <even now>>>>`

`<"What would have happened, if he had never run into Angel? Would he have simply carried on, never knowing what or why he was, for the rest of his life? Would there have been some other trigger? Would he have come apart, as unstable as he was those first few weeks?">`

`<"Did he know her name back then? Or was it as unimportant to him at the time as it is now?"> <not entirely correct <a name is a marker he could use to find her <non-trivial>>>`

`<he remembers that feeling of having the wind knocked out of him <over all else here>> <"Had she known what would happen? Did she know what meeting her would awaken in him? She must have, right? So then..."> <"If so...">`

`<the driver behind his revisiting <"Why?">>`

`<>`

`<no answer> <never an answer> <not even silence> <silence would be an answer>`

`<doesn't stop him trying <doesn't stop him going back <to find something new in the dust <something he must have missed>>>>`

`<"No answer doesn't mean there won't ever be one.">`

`<memories aren't toys of course <they break like them all the same>>`

`<she has <brown> <black> <blonde> <red> hair sometimes>`

`<she drives a <Civic> <Durango> <Sienna> <Subaru> sometimes>`

`<she <smiles knowingly> <winks> <waves amiably> <drops the smile> <ignores him altogether> sometimes> <that part is the least consistent>`

`<all of it too easy <to change> <to imagine>>`

`<she never talks to him though <only their parents> <that much is always the same> <keeps her eyes on the road mostly <on their blown <shredded> tire<s> before that <unsalvageable <not the only thing here that is>> <vanishes once her good deed is done <as quickly as she appeared>>>>>`

`<worn smooth as it is from being turned over and over in his mind <he won't miss this one too much>>`

`<it was lost long ago>`

 

**** **1 day, 13 hours**

 “Thought you said doing handstands against walls is dumb.”

Dipper attempts to shrug in his current position. He fails.

Mabel joins him in the exercise, hair falling into a heap on the floor. The collar of her oversized sweater, the one featuring the baby giraffe with neon blue spots, slips down to cover half her face, muffling her words. “Betcha I can last longer than you can.”

“I’ll take it.”

He expects her to try and cheat, tickle him or something, but instead she keeps talking.

“What’s the ulterior motive this time, huh? Knowing you, you're probably not doing it for the pretty colors.”

“Trying to jog my memory. You know how you remember things better when you pose like what you were doing at the time?”

“Oh so you’re still on the being a future ghost conspiracy.”

“Demon, actually,” he corrects. “What is it with you and ghosts?”

“Is it working, you think?”

“Not sure. I’m starting to doubt it, I mean I didn’t really have a body at the time anyway.”

“See, that sounds like more of a ghost than a demon.”

“Have you ever met a ghost or a demon, Mabel?”

“Can't say I have.”

“Well there you go.”

Getting a bit light-headed now. They spend a moment concentrating.

“You sure you didn’t just dream the stuff?" Mabel starts again. "I’ve had loads of dreams that felt like they lasted a way long time. Remember that time I had the dream I was a watermelon thief and you were my wisecracking cat sidekick and mom had to stop me from using the bedsheets to climb down from the hotel balcony?” She’s grinning, but Dipper could remember that being amusing to no one else.

“Super sure," he answers, fighting the urge to go into more detail on the unspoken asterisk.

He successfully fails to resist the urge. "I guess it's also possible I _could_ be your Dipper, who's simply contracted the memories of a different Dipper when our realities happened to touch. That happens pretty often, it's the source of a lot of inspiration for this species because their waterlogged brains like to think everything they imagine must’ve been _their_ idea. Yikes! Do you know how many interdimensional copyright law violations humanity’s racked up? Let me tell you, they haven’t invented a number high enough to pay the fine.”

“Is ‘Dipper’s just crazy’ a theory?”

It doesn't get to him; he's planned appropriately for this and doesn't miss a beat. “Yeah, check page 9, it’s grouped together with that other one I mentioned. Just for the sake of completeness, you know.”

Dipper imagines himself striking a victorious pose when Mabel gets up to flip through the notebook on his bed; apparently she’d already forgotten about their bet. He'd remind her later for maximum effect.

“The page that says 'Killjoy Theories'?”

“That’s the one.”

She takes a box of colored pencils out from under her bed and starts drawing pictures in between his notes. Dipper doesn’t make any attempt to stop her, not that one would prove effective. He remembers regretting he hadn’t openly shown more appreciation for the illustrations when his sister was still - Oh would you look at that, time to think about something else.

“I’mma rename these Mabel’s Far Superior Theories. Cuz not to brag or anything, but I _have_ been right every time.”

There's nothing Dipper can say to that, so he lets himself slump to the floor instead. He’s just gonna lie here a minute til the purple goes out of his vision.

Mabel turns a page. Then another. Then flips through them rapidly just to see how many have been written on. “Dude. I haven’t seen you go this serious since those numbers on the boring pages of books conspiracy.”

“See, we’ve been over this, ISBN obviously stands for Incursive Supernatural Beings Network. You know that childrens’ series _A Sequence of Inauspicious Happenings_? If you write down all their ISBN codes in reverse order, they form a warning in -”

“Aw man, no stop," Mabel groans, falling dramatically back against the bed. "Dipper _it’s Summer_ , I don’t wanna talk about any numbers that aren’t grams of sugar per serving size.”

That's fair.

So they go out for ice cream.

 

**** **2 days, 5 hours**

Mabel opens the trapdoor to the roof to see what all the noise is about, still rubbing the Sandman’s gift out of her eyes. She is just in time to see her brother lob a novelty snowglobe off the roof. It doesn't travel very far.

“Go on, you cowardly thrice-damned ectoparasites, go on!” he is shouting, voice cracking from the exercise. “But I’ll get the last laugh in the end, you’ll see, ‘cause here’s a freebie for you: the humans win! They rid the earth of your wretched kind not forty years from now! So live it up while you can, scions of Faullck the Flesh Eater, these days are your last! Mark me, I've seen it!”

He starts to laugh, loud and maniacal, only to turn and find her staring. An awkward pause.  
Then a hand goes up behind his head as he suddenly becomes enamoured with the dawn sky above. He casually nudges something behind him off the roof with a foot; from the crash she hears, it was probably another snow globe.

“The uh. Ahem! Mosquitoes. They got me good last night,” he mumbles. “The bites on my arm even spell out ‘bewart’. They never could get it right.”

Mabel goes back to bed before he can finish stammering out the excuse.

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**  

_His sister did not seem overly worried in the face of his admission that yes, he kind of maybe felt impelled to make her teacher vomit centipedes every time she opens her mouth._

_“See this is good, this is communication.” She gives him a thumbs up._

_He returns the gesture with an incredulous look. There isn’t much point in being subtle, guarded, or secretive when only his sister can see him most of the time. “It’s a Bad Thing, isn’t it?”_

_She shrugs and continues to plait her hair over one shoulder. “You’re overblowin’ it, it’s a perfectly human thing to wonder about stuff like what the inside of someone’s digestive tract might look like hung up for birthday streamers.”_

_She pauses, considering the drawing she’d been working on. “Hm, you know. That’d probably look way festive actually.”_

_“BUT!” she continues, and the force of the word nearly makes him jump (or at least, hover a little higher in midair), “Not only would that be gross and smell really bad and make us sick, those thoughts?” She taps her skull. “Go directly into the thought incinerator, never to darken my mindscape again. The end.”_

_“And if I don’t have a thought incinerator?” Dipper asks, palms up, humoring her._

_“Nah I’m pretty sure everyone has built in memory disposals. You’re just being a drama llama.”_

_“Okay I am like 80% sure you are fucking with me but - “_

_“Dude, language, there are like children present,” Mabel interrupts, pointing at the stuffed animals over on her bed. He just rolls his eyes._

_“Come on bro, you are this big shot demon right? Just exile those tiny thought demons.. “ She makes an arch with one hand and mimes a person walking through with the other. “Straight to tiny thought hell.”_

_“Language,” he says, a small jerk of his head indicating their impressionable velveteen audience._

_She frowns, confused. “What did I say?”_

_“Hell.”_

_“_ Dipper _.”_

_“Sorry. Er. Heck?”_

_She throws up her hands. “You see that, you see what you did, it is like rubbing off on me. I’m gonna have to wash my mouth out with soap now thanks to you.”_

_He just grins; she knew how to cheer him up. At least he does until he sees flecks of grey dulling her aura as she exits their room a little too quickly to be casual. She's been trying to hide it, but he can tell making faces like that has been unnerving her since his eyes changed. He reminds himself for the twenty third time to be more careful, he’s gotta make sure to appear as harmless as possible._

_She comes back in after making more gargling sounds in the bathroom than likely were necessary for the sake of the joke, now wearing a pair of glittery pink glasses in the shape of the year 2010. She gets out a notepad and pen (topped with a bright yellow smiley face), and tries unsuccessfully to give him a thoughtful, professional look through the 0′s of the glasses._

_“Now, tell me all about these intrusive thoughts of yours.”_

_Dipper, for his part, reclines as best he can in the air, crosses his legs, and threads his fingers together behind his head. “Well, it all started when Mrs. Baker was taking a bite of the apple Marina brought her right. I figured, wouldn’t it just be a riot if I did it just then? It’d be like one of those fairy tales with the cursed apples, and instead of listening to book reports for another hour you guys could suggest funny ways for her to break the spell. Didn’t you want to set her up with Mr. Erskin sometime? You could tell her to try and kiss him, maybe make up a story about how his name means ‘prince’  or something noble like that, and then I’d take back what I did, we could have been a team and -”_

_“Bro, cool down a sec.” Mabel holds up her hand mirror and he reflexively looks over at it. His eyes have started to glow._

_Dipper takes a deep breath and slowly releases it, the light dissipating somewhat in response. “Sorry.”_

<still not ready>

_“S’ okay. Now then, in my very esteemed and well-educated opinion, you’re just getting wicked bored in class like everyone else.” She takes off the glasses and lays down her pad of paper. Dipper can make out a drawing of a little rabbit in a tuxedo out of the corner of his eye._

_“.. Are you sure?” he asks cautiously. He’d like to believe that’s true, but wouldn’t put it past his sister to be downplaying things in order to spare his feelings. And also, he suspected, to keep him from becoming upset again. He didn’t like entertaining the thought she might fear him on some level, but at the same time he found it hard to believe she could be comfortable around him when it’s been weeks and those two bullies still haven’t come back to class._

_“Positively sure and surely positive,” she says light-heartedly enough, soothing his reservations. “If it happens again maybe just, uh... hop into somebody’s daydream and make it really cool? You guys could have an imagination flexing contest!”_

 ...

_Mrs. Baker just couldn’t understand it._ My Brother Sam is Dead _could be a little slow, sure, but half her students had gone glass-eyed ten minutes into class time and she hasn’t once been able to switch readers without reannouncing which page they’re on. She hopes she isn’t becoming the new “boring” teacher, but she makes a note to start tomorrow off with a video. Just in case._

 

`<'you' does not promise an 'I'>`

`<reflect on mirrors>`

 

**** **2 weeks, 1 day, 12 hours**

"You taking that umbrella to hide from Wendy?" Mabel asks playfully just before Dipper is about to head off, whispering the name at the end like the teenager was still around to overhear them and not well on her way home for the day.

"What, this?" He brandishes the cheap grey umbrella he pilfered from the gift shop that he’s bringing along in case of argopelters. "No no, just bringing it along in case of rain. Why uh, why would you think that?"

Her only response is to give him a look. He thought he'd done a better job of concealing how uncomfortable Wendy’s behavior made him than that. Her oddly coquettish demeanor had been strange enough to merit devoting a few pages of his makeshift journal to solid character descriptions for him to compare people against in the future in order to detect future anomalies ( _Note: Wendy is cool. All uncool behavior should be reported 'suspicious'._ ). It also contributed to the evidence sustaining what he'd dubbed the Childhood Wish Fulfillment Theory.

That was only one of the many entries still in his current list of possible explanations for this mess of course. Alternate Universe Theory, Psychic Burnout Theory, Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency Theory, Time Time Theory, the list goes on. There was Demon World Theory too, of course. He’d exiled it to the very last page, where the cardboard met the paper and he didn’t have to think about it often.

Dipper heads out, knowing he hasn’t convinced Mabel, and indeed putting up the umbrella as he passes Wendy’s place (five minutes later he realizes that could only have made him  _more_  conspicuous). It takes him a while, but he finally stops near the fence of a house whose address he briefly opens his notebook to the character section to confirm. He approaches the door nervously and knocks, wondering if this isn’t a bad idea.

A little old woman answers the door. He knows her, can tell that much on sight, even if he isn't sure just how. He’s come to realize there are quite a few people in Gravity Falls who trigger that feeling.

Roughly five minutes later, Dipper scribbles Soos’s name beside Lazy Susan and McGucket in his notebook, adds a note that the guy lives with his father, and heads back to the shack, dejected.

Worst thing is, he can't even say he misses the guy. It's not enough feeling disappointed about not getting to see a dear friend again. When he misses people now, he doesn't see their faces, doesn't hear their voices, doesn't see the time spent together the way he should. He knows what happened in them, knows what they mean to him, but the memories of the events themselves are refusing to come when he calls them, more and more. And knowing alone isn't anything special. He Knows lots of things.

Unnerving.

He could remember a time when he wanted nothing more than to move past the events of Last Summer. Nobody forgets their death, but then most have it easy. Meet death, start fresh; new person, no problem. Dipper had met his death only for it to turn and follow him around like the most loyal of dogs, bounding to the forefront of his thoughts when he and his sister both blew out their birthday candles but only she was another year older.

Now he concentrates as hard as he dares on the details buried deep in the past, digging for something, anything meaningful. It should be easy; it was Soos, for goodness' sake! Holding on for dear life that time the two of them went golf car drag racing with him, what his bear hugs felt like, the way he sounded when he laughed for way too long at one of Dipper's terrible jokes to cheer him up; anything would work. But just what it is he's lost this time eludes him, and not for the first time since he came here.

Dark clouds gather above, as if fueled by his building frustration. It's a good thing he brought an umbrella.

 

**** **2 weeks, 1 day, 13 hours**

It rains. They spend the rest of the afternoon collecting slugs for Mabel’s shell service (she's painted the shells rainbow colors for opening week).

Dipper does not ask his sister why they are doing this. He knows well enough that the why seldom crosses her mind. It isn’t something she needs.

Dipper does take a moment to inform her that snail shells are part of the snail itself and are affixed to their bodies, not serendipitously discovered by lucky slugs. "Oh,” she says. They continue collecting.


	2. Absent-mindedness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  __ **Absent-mindedness** \- Inattentive or shallow processing that contributes to weak memories of ongoing events.

_"And you were there and you were there and you were there_ _…”_

\-  Dorothy

***

  **2 w/ 5 d/ 6 h**

For the second time, Dipper Pines is jolted into awareness by a fall as the barrel full of keychains he'd been hiding inside tips over and promptly deposits him and a number of the souvenirs onto the gift shop floor with a crash that sounds louder for the stillness of the hour. He wastes little time registering the faint light of dawn and picking himself up, stretching to ease the dull pain in his limbs that comes from sleeping in such a cramped, unnatural position.

Having righted the barrel and scooped the scattered keychains back inside it, he knocks on the lid of his barrel's nearest neighbor. "Mabel. Mabel, hey. Wake up."

Following a brief pause, the covering lifts a short ways, riding the top of his sister's head as she peeks out, expression disgruntled. She rubs at an eyelid. "Did you catch him?"

"That's what I was going to ask," he tells her. "It was your shift last."

"Oh..." she mumbles, breaking off to yawn. "Didn't see nofin bro, sorry."

He sighs and walks over to the vending machine, crouching down to check the floor. The dust he’d spread around it when he was sweeping up yesterday doesn't look like it's been disturbed. They probably hadn't missed anything.

"Hey, just throwing this out there into the beyond. Whoosh! Here it comes. Maybe we could watch it every third night instead of every other one?" Mabel suggests, carefully climbing out of her barrel so as not to spill any of the plastic skulls inside. "Or you know, I'm still Team 'Just Ask'."

"This stuff's hidden for a reason, if it's down there at all. If he knows that we're onto him, he'll just be that much more careful about hiding how to get in from us," Dipper explains. He's done so before, but she needs some reminding when it comes to things she doesn't really want to do.

"Wait, hold up," she says, raising a hand, catching on to one part of his answer in particular. "You don't know _for sure_ something's down there?"

"Well, I am pretty sure."

"Like, what percent."

"Um... Hmm.. " He runs the math in his head, eyes darting to places in the room where triangles should be, but conspicuously aren't. During Plan G they'd dug through every trash can, checked behind every painting, looked under every bed, went through every cushion, rifled through every drawer, listened intently for every potential secret panel. They hadn't found a thing.

Dipper's fingers unconsciously close around the thing in his left pocket.

"Be honest."

"Fifty?" Fuck, his voice cracked.

"Dude... I'm going back to bed," Mabel says, heading for the stairs.

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_The noise is coming from around here._

_Where’s here? Good question! Bit naïve though. Here isn’t a place, smart one._

_It’s dark down here. He thinks ‘down’ but if there’s an ‘up’ he’s never seen it. Warm too. He thinks sleep must have been like this, once upon a time._ <only 4 months prior> _(Really? Time flies.) Also a not-place, but a not-place you ‘went to’, even without moving an inch, right? There’s water up to his ankles, rising slow and sure._ <it is not water <though it can drown him all the same>> _(Right, so what’s it matter?)_

_There’s something staring at him. Always, with those round, disembodied eyes. He would tell it it’s being rather rude, but he always forgets how to speak. Besides, it can’t see him. He doesn’t Know why. Pretty pitiful, if you ask him (oh, you didn’t?). What’s the point in growing yourself a pair of eyes if they don’t do anything?_

_He thinks the noise comes from this creature, though it has no body (did it lose it somewhere?). He thinks it’s speaking… singing? If it is, he can’t make out any words. The melody, however..._

_And then it is gone again._

_All of it._

`This isn’t a memory. This isn’t an anything. How is that fair?`

`≪you must understand> none of this <is> <was> meant for you>`

 

**3 w/ 0 d/ 11 h**

When Dipper hears the trapdoor open behind him, he reluctantly lowers his binoculars and turns, expecting Mabel. Instead he sees the top half of a pig poking up through the opening in the roof.

“Um.. Hey Waddles,” he says with a little wave, catching on.

“Why hello, Dipper!” Mabel’s voice, artificially deep and jovial and over-the-top like an underpaid mall Santa, replies from somewhere below. A hand briefly appears to wave one of the pig’s forefeet at him. “And I do believe I had Mabel inform you, my name is Wobbles.”

“Right.” Dipper recalls the additional tally mark he’d added under ‘Alternate Universe Theory’ about an hour ago. (“Now you’re just graspin’ at straws, dude.” “Slight name changes are classic alternate universe, sis.”)

“My simply stunning new bestest friend for life sent me to fetch you to help her dunk a fellow by the name of Stanford Pines, as it would appear the angry mob seeking to burn her at the stake for witchery has dispersed at last! Also, just between you and I, holing up on the roof all day to avoid Wendy is a rather dull activity.”

“I am not avoiding Wendy,” Dipper lies. “I’m on the lookout for that time traveler I told Mabel about.”

“But sir! Surely you can get a better view of the festivities attending them yourself,” the pig implores.

“Alright, fine,” Dipper relents, stooping to gather his things. “Tell her to give me five more minutes.”

…

A hand reaches to grasp his wrist the moment he exits the safety of the shack, pulling him in the direction of the fair at an ever-accelerating pace. The hand belongs, unsurprisingly, to Mabel Pines.

“Come on, before Stan's angry mob reaches critical mass!” she urges as she weaves them through the flock of attendees. Dipper notices the crowd has thinned a bit since this morning. He hopes it isn’t indicative of too many accidents on the rides.

“Mabel, you know it’s rigged. There’s no way to dunk him.”

“Don’t you see? That’s why it’s up to us!” she exclaims, bringing her mad rush to an abrupt halt by the hot dog cart to turn and face him. “We know he’s cheating, so we can out-cheat him.”

“How do you propose we do that exactly?” Dipper asks, crossing his arms.

“I was thinkin’ we build a cannon. Or a catapult! Whichever’s more WHAM. Maybe both? I'll be on convoluted design duty, you get the cans and cats. Together we’re like unstoppable!”

“Hmm. I dunno...” he starts, but he can’t fool himself, or his sister for that matter, by stalling. He likes where this is going, he’ll admit. “Actually, you know what? I’ll do you one better. Bring it in.”

The pair put their hands on each other's shoulders and lean in close. Dipper lowers his voice. “Uh, right, so, haven't done this in a while. I’ll need sugar, some piping, tree stump killer, kitty litter...”

…

Five minutes before the fair shuts down for the day.

The twins stand tall before their great uncle’s infamous dunking chamber, hands on their hips, their little ‘surprise’ tucked into the back of Mabel’s baggiest sweater (the one featuring a magic wand surrounded by tiny, multicolored stars). They announce their intent to topple the villain once and for all to the crowd of irate patrons he’s amassed throughout the afternoon with his jeering. The old man laughs.

Mabel reaches a hand up and over her shoulder, slowly producing their makeshift rocket launcher. Stan squints at the contraption as she weighs it in her hands. Then the girl takes aim, the confusion apparent on his face only adding teeth to the grin she wears.

She pulls the trigger. Her brother covers his ears. A sugar rocket punches through wood like wet tissue paper.

A scoundrel falls, defeated.

…

“You know…” Dipper begins, striking out yet another line in his journal. It’s the fifth such line since the twins set out into the woods an hour earlier to give Stan some time to cool off ("More like dry off!"). He starts reshuffling the deck of Mystery Shack attraction themed playing cards he's adapted as a dowsing tool ("You'd be surprised how many possible permutations of 52 cards there are. It's a bit of a double-edged sword though; if something's there, you'll pick it up, but you could easily miss it in all the noise."). “It’s too bad you aren’t really a witch, it’d make finding potential S.A. hotspots a little easier. You could just summon us up a familiar to sniff them out.”

Mabel stops playing with Wobbles in the grass and hoists the pig up into her arms, thrusting him toward to her brother. “I am totally a witch. This is my familiar right here!”

Dipper flinches sharply at the sudden movement, disturbing a couple drawings of histograms and nearly falling backward off the boulder he’s been using as a seat. Mabel’s eager expression shifts to quizzical as she lowers the pudgy creature.

“Wow, rude. What was that about, huh?”

“It’s just, uh,” Dipper mutters, embarrassed by the overreaction. “He doesn’t. Didn’t. Like me, normally.”

Mabel’s eyes fall to the pig. “Sure he does.”

“No.”

“Come on, give him a li'l pat, you’ll see. I mean just look at that face!”

Dipper looks. Wobbles stares back up at him and snuffles, expression unreadable as far as he’s concerned.

“I’m not convinced,” Dipper says flatly.

“Eh, it’ll happen. Shouldn’t force it, I guess.” Mabel squats down to Wobbles’ level. “Okay now, Wobbles, listen up. We need you to be the familiar and scent out the magic. It smells like this!” She hugs the ungulate tight to her magic wand sweater.

“Mabel that’s not how —"

“Sic ‘em, boy!” The command drowns out Dipper’s reservations. The pig trots off at an easy pace for his stubby legs, Mabel rising to follow him with a wink in Dipper’s direction, retrieving her shovel and backpack from the ground. Dipper sighs, stuffs the cards and journal into his own backpack, slings it over his shoulder, and follows suit.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Have you been crossing pages out?” Dipper asks as they set off, meaning the notebook, which was becoming a shared project before his eyes and without his volition. He’d rather not believe his recent lapses in memory yet extend to include failing to recollect his own additions to the growing tome.

“Yeah. I’m helping so I get to be a contributor too, right?” Mabel throws out over her shoulder, immediately soothing those budding fears.

“But I hadn’t exactly ruled out Dream Theory or Afterlife Theory yet.” Not ruled out, but unlikely nevertheless, he had to admit. This could be no one’s dream but his own or Mabel’s. His infernal insomnia and her death a year prior threw a bit of a wrench into that one. And this situation struck him as altogether too kind for something like him to be consigned to it upon his ultimate destruction.

“Dipper.” Mabel sighs.

“What? Was it the names? I’m telling you, simple, explanatory titles are the way to go,” he counters prematurely, punctuating each adjective by jabbing a finger into the palm of the opposite hand.

“It’s not that the titles lack imagination, it’s that those particular ideas do. You make those theories about LITERALLY everything!”

“I do not.”

“Do so. Every time we watch anything it’s ‘well what if actually none of that was FOR REAL, what if so-and-so’s dead or dreaming or abducted by aliens’.” Mabel turns to walk backward, allowing her to face him as she continues. “Tell me something Dipper, why can’t you let happy endings stay happy, huh?”

“It’s not that, just. You know,” he says, trailing off a moment to grapple with the words to describe this particular flavor of his omnipresent paranoia. “When everything illogically _happens_ to turn out fine, perfect solution for everybody, it feels like there’s something there they aren’t telling us —”

“They,” she echoes, forming scare quotes around the word with her fingers.

“Like there's more to it, a hidden ending or storyline,” Dipper finishes, undeterred by her teasing. “That or they’re getting away with highway robbery on us.”

“Yeah, I buy that for a dollar.” There's a genuinely condemnatory undercurrent to her tone. Had he touched a nerve somewhere?

 

`<another mistake> <you're slipping>`

`Ladies, gentlemen, and others, this is your captain speaking. We seem to be experiencing some minor technical difficulties. Now, if you'll look to your left, you'll see my copilot being thrown headlong outta the plane. You see, folks, no one likes a negative Nancy.`

 

“No, really,” he insists and oh no, she’s got him going again, that troublesome need to say his piece. Too late to stop himself. “They lead us on and set us up, with time limits to inevitable doom and disaster, then they tell us the counter just happens to stop one second shy? The rocks fall, but everyone lives? We’re seriously expected to believe this? Like, we know those guys were toast there, they can’t just slap a pleasant ending onto it, it’s insulting. We all know it can't be true.” Then again, perhaps surviving this summer originally had been proof enough otherwise.

“Soooo you fix it by saying they were lying to the audience the entire time. Nothing anybody ever did meant anything?” She blows a raspberry to indicate her level of approval.

“I mean, there has to be some explanation —"

“Hold that terrible thought,” Mabel interrupts, whipping back around at the sudden sound of stirring shrubbery. Wobbles has stopped roaming ahead to root about beneath a patch of bushes with his short snout.

“Aha! Told ya we’d need this,” Mabel says, flourishing the shovel before tossing it to her brother.

He nearly drops it catching it two-handed, then leans against the implement as though it were a cane. “You also thought we’d need five rolls of stickers and a scuba diving helmet.”

“And we did! I’ve been sticking them around to mark our place, see?” She gestures back the way they came and Dipper turns. Bright orange and yellow stickers indeed adorn the bark of several low-hanging branches. “I brought hot pink ones for when we find the super special tree or compost heap or whatever too.”

“So that’s what you were doing. I figured you were making it a point to high-five every tree in Gravity Falls or something.”

“It’s that too.”

“What about the helmet?”

“Well what are you gonna do if your magic spot is at the bottom of like, an enchanted faerie river slash hot mermaid cove? You've gotta start thinking these mystical quests through, I swear.”

Dipper digs the shovel blade into the dirt with his foot, lifts up the first mound of earth. Drawing a blank on an appropriate response, he shrugs instead. “I guess you’re right.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

...

Dipper manages to put his back into digging for roughly fifteen minutes before stopping to rest. He leans against the shovel handle again, catching his breath, squinting in the direction of the sunset. “Thinking this familiar thing’s a bust and there’s nothing down there, shockingly. Wanna check around for hidden switches and head back?”

Mabel, spacing out while reclining against Wobbles, drifts back into reality. “One-Eyed Willy’s finally giving up on his treasure then, huh?”

“I don’t think you’re referencing that movie correctly.”

“Aren't I?” Mabel sticks out her tongue playfully. “Didn’t we establish that I’m always right about every idea that pops into my noggin?”

Dipper raises his eyebrows, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “What about the time you swallowed all those glow sticks to try and make yourself glow in the dark?”

“Eh, the nurses in the ER were all really cute so it worked out.”

Dipper indicates the hole he’s dug with a tip of his head. “Hey, you think if I buried you in there anybody would find the body?”

Mabel gasps in mock horror before turning to her porcine companion. “Wobbles, if Dipper tried anything, you’d go for reinforcements and avenge me, right?”

Dipper grins and levels a finger-gun right between Wobbles' black, adorable eyes. “Sorry little buddy, can’t afford to have witnesses. Bang!”

“Oh noooooo,” Mabel wails softly as she nudges Wobbles over onto his back to play dead. The pig sticks his feet up into the air, expecting a belly rub. “Wobbles no, you’re supposed to stay still. Anyway, uh, to like semi-serious answer the question, wouldn’t my stickers lead people to the scene of the crime?”

Dipper considers this for a moment or two, then snaps his fingers. “Ugh, you’re right. Too much evidence to dispose of by myself.” Mabel reaches into the hazardous depths of her own backpack and slides out something that looks suspiciously like one of her scrapbooks.

“… What is that?” Dipper asks, eyes narrowing slightly, an accusation buried somewhere in his tone.

Mabel smiles, the picture of innocence. He knows better. “Nothing too important.”

“Uh-huh, okay,” he says in the way that meant this wasn’t settled in the slightest. He silently resolves to steal a peek at it later. “I’m gonna fill this back in while you do your cryptic nonsense, then we can go back.” 

Altogether, for a scouting mission, disappointing but not unexpected. No inexplicable feelings of warmth, no flashes of light, no voices, no unnatural animal behavior (the crow that untied his laces probably didn't count) or plant life, no strange footprints or noises, no dramatic variations in weather. They hadn't even gotten lost! Not a single check mark lay under any of the entries in 'Places Explored'. He supposes he can always look forward to more thorough, conclusive results provided he can manage to get his hands on some lighter fluid or a couple dozen compasses. If all else fails, he could probably whip up a decent magical barometer given enough time.

Dipper lifts the shovel and turns back, preparing to heal the scar he’s made in the earth beneath the bushes. Instead he freezes in place.

It can’t be.

“Are you hearing this, Wobbles?” Mabel is saying behind him. “He thinks I’m the one being cryptic here. Me!”

Dipper tosses back the shovel before scooting down into the hole, pushing aside bunches of roots veining through the dirt.

It is.

“Mabel, get the pink stickers out, this is it, the place!” he crows, crawling back out from under the bushes and rolling over onto his back. An onlooker might suspect he's fallen prey to fatigue, but that wasn't it. Just the opposite. He bites his bottom lip hard to keep his amusement to himself, not wanting it to unsettle his sister yet again, but it isn't enough to stop him cackling at the sheer dumb luck of it all, of the very existence of the thing clutched in his left hand. His mind goes to (their third?) Pioneer Day panning for gold, the sense of swelling excitement at their discovery of a nugget the size of a tooth, too much even for Stan's grumblings about the worth of pyrite to quash (it hadn't mattered, as the townsfolk were obligated to treat the treasure as genuine for the duration of the festival).

He'd known he would find something if he kept at this (kept digging so to speak!). After all, a world without magic is an oxymoron. But he'd also resigned himself to the worst case, the long game; magic very well may not have existed here in a form he could recognize or through a means he could access (especially given his numerous disadvantages at present). And yet, here it was, a sign as familiar, if distant, as this version of his (home)town lost to time.

Though she stands above him now, Mabel's eyes are on hole he's dug. If she notices any discontinuity in his behavior, she gives no indication. “Really? How d’ya know, are there dwarves down there? Can I get a turn?”

Dipper holds up the misshapen mushroom, the gesture luring her attention. “Do you know what this is?”

“Uh, shiny broccoli?”

“It’s a percepshroom. There used to be tons of them around here before word got out about its dramatic effect on the neuroplasticity of the mammalian brain.”

“So it’s magic?”

“Magic is just a word people use to describe complex phenomena they don’t understand, Mabel.”

“So… it’s magic.”

“Here's hoping.” He drops it into his pack and stands. “And I’m thinking the levels needed to grow these puppies should be just what we need.”

Dipper turns slowly, giving the clearing a cursory scan, before breaking out into a grin and striding over to a fallen tree. He pats it, running his fingers along the bark. Good and solid, not rotten. Warm and dry, with a fine layering of moss.

For just a moment, he feels guilty for the giddiness rising up in him unbidden at the prospect of a break in the case; he shouldn't treat this like a game, no matter how long it's been since he's had a genuine mystery to solve. True, some capricious genie had decided to grant his three dearest wishes; humanity, ignorance (more like Ignorance), a living other half. Still, and call him ungrateful if you must, he wasn't one inclined to unthinkingly indulge those gifts. If it had indeed been the intention of some entity that he do so, then it must not know him well. Questions would be asked, answers tirelessly sought after. Because ultimately, as much fun as putting pieces together or deciphering riddles might be, the pleasure he takes in such activities that drives his dogged pursuits is derived chiefly from the payoff: the dawning comprehension, the discovery of the solution. Put simply, at the end of the day, not knowing is not an option.

Dipper waves his sister over. “Time to deploy those hot pink stickers.” She happily obliges.

“What now?”

Dipper's fingers find something in the left pocket of his shorts and give it a grateful squeeze. “Well first, we’re gonna need an ax.”

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_She doesn't even get to hit REM before he's screaming bloody murder._

_The sound tears through his throat, desperate and piercing, like it's the last gulp of air that will ever fill his lungs, only rather than cut short it just goes on and on and on and on while he thrashes in the air above the bed he hasn't slept in for weeks, gripping his head like he's afraid it will split open. He isn't afraid. He'd rather it did. Why doesn't it?_

_And then she's there, the only one who can hear him, trying to pull him down where she can reach, and he stops screaming, but he's curling into himself now, trying to get away from her, stammering something barely intelligible._

_"Just go ahead, please, please, just, just kill me already, please, just stop, please please, anything..." he pleads, voice breaking off into a whine, shaking his head with such force that he should see stars. He doesn't see stars. He'd rather see stars._

_Instead he sees_ <

<65 million <637 thousand> <4 hundred> <4> years ago>

<2:53 PM <PDT≫ <Midsummer>

<44.793531, -121.556397>

the world is ~~dead~~ dust and searing heat

<someone is laughing

<“Let’s see their atomic toys top THAT!”≫

>

_Nevermind. What. He. Sees._

_Her arms are around him now. He can't see them, there’s too much smoke pressing at his_ <stolen> _eyes for it to be safe to open them again, but he can sense them there._

_"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He would keep going if the biting smell of sulfur hadn’t compromised his nose and throat_. _Instead, he holds her tight and sobs fat golden tears that fizzle to smoke where they land._

_Her voice is calm, whispered; rare enough attributes on their lonesome. "Dipper, come on, bro, look at me. Can you tell me what’s wrong?” There’s something behind him now. He can feel his_ <physical<!≫ _vertebrae on its surface._ <a wall> <she’s sat him against it>

_“It’s all burning,” he tries to tell her (warn her?_ <much too late for that> _), slumping, weak from lack of oxygen. “I’m burning.”_

_“No, you’re not. You’re being a weirdo, is what you’re doing.”_

_His attempt at an argument devolves into wheezing. The fire has gotten inside him now, is melting his teeth and lungs and stomach and legs and arms and eyes to molten liquid the color of his cursed blood that’s it curtain’s closing show’s over —_

_Then rain._

_He flinches, but it is not a rain of blood or fire or acid or meteors._

_Just cool, critical, rain._

_Carefully, hesitantly, he cracks open his eyes._

_He’s sitting in the bathtub, showerhead gently sprinkling him with water. His sister is watching him with undisguised worry moistening her tired eyes, hand on the knob, the dial set as far past C as it could turn._

_He takes a deep, steadying breath. The air is clear, carrying to him the scent of rosemary mint shampoo._

_Then he thinks, it really isn't fair._

_She shouldn't have had to wake up to that sound. She shouldn't have had to hear it, ever. Not when he died, and certainly not at least once a week since._

_..._

_She drapes the strawberry pattern blanket over his_ <temporarily physical> _shoulders._ <she's seen emergency services provide shock blankets in movies> _"You gonna be okay?"_

_He pulls it around himself and nods. "Already forgot most of it," he mumbles, voice hoarse from the earlier strain._

_Mabel pulls out the chair opposite him and flops into the seat before sliding him a Pitt Cola across the table. "So uh… We any closer to figuring this thing out?" she probes gently, tone clawing its way back to its hopeful status quo as she snaps open her own soda. It takes her a couple of tries, fingers quivering. He doesn't think it'd be a good idea for her to go back to sleep just yet._

_He holds up a finger to signal for a quick time-out and shuts his eyes, focusing on their parents' bedroom._ <both of them well into stage 3> _No need to keep their voices down then._

_Dipper reopens his eyes, hands fidgeting with his can, passing it back and forth without opening it. It’s cool from the condensation still clinging to the aluminum. It’s necessary. “Maybe. I think... I want to measure it again.”_

_…_

_“Just. Humor me,” Dipper continues to entreat his thoroughly exhausted twin. He takes a few more cautious steps backward, relishing the feeling of his socks sliding over the cool linoleum_ <for what little time remains> _, lengthening the tape measure held between the two of them_ <to five meters even> _._

_“It’s not funny though,” Mabel replies, but she doesn’t let go of her end. He doesn't begrudge her lack of enthusiasm for Experiment 4. Experiments 1 (if Mabel, sitting in the car, grabs hold of Dipper's hand as she begins to accelerate, will he accelerate along with her despite his otherwise massless form? (result: Yes.)) and 2 (does whatever is making contact with Dipper disappear and reappear along with him? (result: No. His ethereal form seems more representative than anything, always wearing the same clothes he did at the time of the original incident.)) hadn't held her interest, forget Experiment 3 (not to be revisited)._

_He hasn’t once glanced at the marked intervals along the tape. The tape measure amounts to little more than a formality, a trigger. His Knowledge takes care of the rest._

_The tape slips through his inexplicably intangible fingers at five meters and fifty-eight centimeters, reeling back to the spool in his sister’s hands. He makes a mental note of the growth._ ≪it continues to be> exponential> _The thought of the numbers ticking up elicits excitement and dread in equal measure_ <dependent on the identity of the independent variable acting here <time or distance <he has yet to rule out either <or both>>>> _._

_“We all done here?” His sister’s voice snaps his thoughts back into focus, as it always does. It doesn’t surprise him how easily he drifted off; there’s only so much he can feel disturbed at his lack of control in such a short period of time._

_“Uh, yeah,” he says, floating over on his back as she stows the tool back in the kitchen closet with their father’s toolkit. As much as he hadn’t missed the lack of immediate sensation, it certainly was easier to get around as a concept than as a person._

_“Hey, I know you wanna wait til you got a solid thesis n' all, but this_ is _going somewhere, right?”_

_“Well. This —” he says, demonstrating the meaning of the word by lightly poking her on the nose._

 

`<"GIVE HIM BACK GIVE HIM BACK GIVE HIM BACK GIVE HIM —">`

 

_“Can’t be a coincidence, can it?"_

_Mabel shrugs, unimpressed. “We’re twins. It’s magic. You’re a doofus.”_

[ _Mabel had yelled for him at the bus the other day. He couldn’t actually hear her from where he was, moping in their room at home. She knew that. The same way she knew that he would come when she called. Maybe she even knew how it felt. She’d felt it too, after all. The two of them had gone bungee jumping on Mount Hood once. She’d finally pushed him off the edge after nearly twenty minutes of false starts and bargaining, flinging him backward into the uncaring atmosphere. He’d looked up and seen the ground was falling too, falling fast, rushing to meet him. The end of the world. He could hear it roar_ <the wind passing his ears> _._

_Then the cord caught._

_The pull was gentler than he expected, growing more and more insistent, slowing the earth’s descent upon him until, just for a moment, it stood still. A beat. Then time went into reverse as his lifeline brought him back up to security._

_Her call was the same. A bungee cord tied round his heart, rather than his ankles._ ]

_~~What if that force could go both ways~~? ~~**What if he ended up pulling her down with him**~~ **?**_

_“Us being twins has never given us special powers before,” he argues back in the present, if he heard himself right. The present has been losing its sense of immediacy lately, but it sounds like something he would say. “So why now?”_

_“Well what else could it be?”_

 

`I know it's your favorite thing to portend doom and calamity, but maybe you could throw me a bone here and lend a progress bar or two?`

 

**** **3 w/ 2 d/ 10 h**

Dipper hears in part when it’s first mentioned, but he’s far more concerned with his investigations at this point than the goings on in the gift shop. That was one thing that hadn’t changed much. Same old suckers telling tales of their road trips, showing off photos and souvenirs, same old effort on his part to feign interest in any of those things (Mabel's better at it, she doesn't have to pretend).

During a pause in Wendy's cycle—smile, take money, calmly explain you're aware it's against the law to pump your own gas in this state, yes that's very interesting thank you, repeat—comes, "My li'l cousin's gonna be coming in with me for a couple weeks... No big deal right, he’ll just sit in the corner, maybe help out a little... "

 

**** **3 w/ 2 d/ 15 h**

"JUMP. OFF. THE ROOF! JUMP. OFF. THE ROOF! JUMP. OFF. THE ROOF!"

Dipper kicks a loose wooden shingle, watches it soar a good ways out and over the _Gift_ sign and land with a soft thump in the grass below, sliding to a stop right in front of his chanting twin sister. "This seems really unsafe."

"That's the idea, bro! Trust me, I've seen this before. The mentor guy throws the apprentice person off a cliff or whatever and the danger awakens his superpowers!"

"I dunno..."

"Do it or we'll call you Thompson II the rest of the summer!"

"Mabel, Thompson jumped off the roof because you guys triple-dog-dared him, if anything _jumping_ is what would make me Thompson II."

"BOOOOOOO, STOP STALLING! JUMP. OFF. THE ROOF! JUMP. OFF. THE ROOF!"

Against his better judgement, Dipper walks back along the spine of the gift shop to give himself space, then starts running. At the last second however, he grinds to a halt with a yelp, clutching at his chest and taking deep breaths. "W-woah, okay, okay, nope, it's too high, I thought it was all right, but then I got closer and wow, that's just too high." 

"Awwww..."

...

"Yeah, well, you wouldn't have done it either," Dipper grumbles.

"You can tell yourself that Thompson II, but I'm not the one who needs help in the magical department, I mean I already proved I am literally a witch."

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_This time, a doctor is his idea. This time, Mabel objects. He doesn't blame her._

My brother with the black and yellow eyes who doesn't always exist is feeling sick.

_He isn't sure sick is the correct word for the intolerable heat that flares beneath his skin with increasing frequency, but it has a certain normalcy to it. It's only expected that children get sick and family get anxious about it, right? No need to bring his unusual circumstances into it._

_It's still awkward to talk about. Their parents hadn't found their story so hard to swallow what with the world being turned upside down overnight, but it certainly left them at a loss for action. There are no specific treatments or test results for what ails him, that's for sure, and with the world in such a race to understand the otherworldly creatures pouring into it, it did not seem wise to reveal to anyone the oddities of their son's existence._

_Still. This has to stop._

_It surprises him the total ease with which he can conjure the more comfortably mundane stories of racing heartbeats, chills, fevers, and numbness, the way he can make his voice tighten and crack just so._ <surprises Mabel too> <she normally wouldn't let him get away with a lie to their parents of this severity <but the nights without rest <refusing to diminish in frequency with time> had eventually worn her down>>  _Even more so the tiny rush of satisfaction felt watching the finer details of humans' auras alter hue with a few well-chosen words._

_(It was fast becoming a sense of his, to know when he had others in the palm of his hand so to speak. Funny just how little effort it took to set the dominoes falling into place.)_

_Despite his efforts convincing others tests were warranted (and that he needs his sister present with him "for moral support, we're twins you know"), the handful of visits_ <timed according to premonitions of more lengthy intervals of tangibility <"Okay, but if your powers can just decide to tell you things like that, why don't they tell you what's wrong, huh?">> _reveal nothing out of the ordinary; quite the contrary, the physicians are baffled as to the source of every concern. His heart is “blessed with youthful vitality”, the constituents of his blood panel lie strictly within their respective standard ranges_ <theoretically impossible <he and Mabel had seen his blood lighten to a glowing gold <had watched it fizzle <like hot grease> or writhe <like a baited worm>>> <"Some kind of glamour? Does it only change under specific conditions?" <"Uh-uh, no way, whatever thought you're having up there in your brain, you're not testing that, them's the rules. Slam dunk it into the incinerator like we practiced. Allow me to demonstrate on the laundry basket!">> _, pathology comes back benign._ <not a single query from anyone regarding his eyes <he assumes this bespeaks the prevalence of color contacts <Mabel says it's not that <but refuses to elaborate>>>>

_The results of a spinal MRI alone are unexpected. Apparently he does not even possess the usual insignificant defects, protrusions, or degeneration typically observed in the vertebrae of the healthy. It’s too perfect._

_His is a bill of physical health clean enough to squeak when rubbed. Inhuman in the strength of its assertion of humanity, in its indifference in the face of the growing supernatural power under his command. He isn’t sure what to think of it, whether or not the lack of somatic evidence or explanation truly serves as a comfort._

_It certainly doesn't stop mere discomfort from becoming pain, doesn't stop pain from becoming intermittent agony. Only one thought passes through his mind on days when it feels as though hot pokers are being thrust up into his gut, through the backs of his eyes:_

What's happening to me?

<much too small>

<<still> not enough space>

_…_

_Someday much later, in the wake of the general success of his sister’s introduction to counseling and methylphenidate, she would broach the accursed topic of his health anew._

_"Just saying, hear me out, maybe you could join one of those new paranormal support group things? There's one meeting on Wednesdays over on Clarewood, you know like past the yoga place? Not too crowded so it's like alienating, but also not too small so it's like awkward. I can play the medium, of course - oh! - and donuts, we could bring donuts -"_

_"Mabel, this isn't waking up to a world where you have a second head or can't hear anything over the plants in your garden who won't quit singing to you in a language no one else understands. This isn't having to learn to care for unruly ghostly pets alongside your living ones or dealing with the unfortunate condition of bursting into hundreds of snakes when you're embarrassed. I am._ Literally. _The most dangerous, detestable creature known to exist."_

_"Dipper, yesterday you hid behind me cuz you said Amber's cat was giving you a death glare."_

_"Cats creep me out okay?"_

_Not that being a demon is the true source of his reluctance; his rational objections nearly always served as mere justification for his actual, less rational fears. Mabel wasn't the type to waste her energy on keeping secrets, shielding the unflattering parts of herself from the world. He was reminded of this difference between them every time she introduced someone to empty air with all the exuberance of the first time, heedless of the countless unfavorable reactions that had come before. But as for himself..._

_He considers it, imagines doing as she does, imagines being seated before some stranger with no wall of white lies between them to keep them at a comfortable distance, imagines entrusting to them the blind terror, the screaming, the recurring feeling of being held down for an eternity beneath the dark, pressing water without opportunity for air. Above all, the shutting down, every thought eradicated save that he cannot take a single second more of this, he can’t he can’t he can’t._

_He can't do it._

_So he doesn't._

 

**** **3 w/ 3 d/ 14 h**

Dipper hefts his miniature golf club. "Ready?"

Mabel pats her own, grinning. "You bet-ty."

"Okay, synchronize watches... now!"

They each press a button.

"You remember the words?"

"See polish, known to weigh less?"

"Si possis, non tu velis."

"Yeah, that!"

"All right. Meet back at Pinesbase Delta 12 in one hour. Go go go."

…

Stan is fast asleep in his chair when Hurricane Mabel dashes into the living room, Tropical Storm Dipper on her heels.

Mabel takes right, shouting something like “Sea pole kiss numb to vein test”, her club swinging and connecting at random, upsetting a lamp and disturbing the aquarium fish. Dipper takes left, reciting the spell under his breath, his club toppling a wall clock shaped like an owl and giving the television a good knock to the backside that somehow changes the channel, leaving poor impressions of English accents to replace the battle cries of combat-hardened toddlers.

Stan wakes to find Mabel climbing onto the dining table to tap the ceiling light as Dipper goes around slaying each of the chairs. “Kids!”

The twins pause mid-swing and look over at him, waiting.

“What the heck’re you doing to my house?!”

The twins look at each other, waiting.

Mabel goes first. “Um, making sure the house is clear of government agents?”

A curt nod from Dipper. “Vague, yet menacing, government agents.”

Stan practically leaps from his chair to check the nearest window, keeping his back flat to the wall as he does so. “You guys seen some suspicious vehicles, figures maybe? I thought I taught ya the code phrase for that,” he grunts in something that might have been meant as a whisper, fat fingers parting the blinds.

Mabel, still standing on the table, lets her club rest over one shoulder. “No, but Dipper thinks some government guys might be keeping him under lockdown or something, so we have to make sure there's no cameras or listening devices and also that none of the stuff in the house is alive.”

“That is NOT what I said.”

“I know, I just made it shorter and less dumb.”

The tension floods out of Stan’s shoulders. “Oh, so it’s a 'conspiracy' thing," he says, the mocking emphasis on that word Dipper knew all to well to be verbal shorthand for "Dipper's just crazy". Even now, after everything, it still stings. "Well, you two break anything, you’re fixing it. I can’t afford to hire a handyman right now,” he says, no longer interested and returning to his chair to catch Rug Rat v. Tater Tot.

Mabel hops down. “Wanna take this show on the road, Dipchip?”

…

“Makes my brain hurt,” Mabel mutters, giving an unimpressive stump in the yard a good whack.

“No, see, sometimes it’s _called_ a government agency when it actually isn’t one. The way guinea pigs aren’t from Guinea and aren’t pigs.”

“My whole life is full of LIES.”

“Sure is, sister!”

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_He has no desire to spy on his parents, honest. He had sensed how quickly the acceptance of his lengthier periods of invisibility had given way to unwillingness to speak of him for fear that the things they discuss might injure his feelings should he overhear, and how quickly that innocent concern in turn made way for this paranoia that he must always be watching, that not even their own dreams, their own minds, may be safe anymore._ <true <after all≫

_Still, he could not bear the alternative. Not knowing_ _where he stands in their eyes would be worse somehow than proving the fears he inspires in them justified._

_So he hovers there, above his sleeping sister, listening to the click of the keys in the other room. When he closes his eyes, he can see the text on the screen so clearly._

 

It is the unalterable, unsustainable nature of demons to foster destruction throughout the realm of order. This is the one rule these monsters leave unbroken, the purpose that trumps all others. The Transcendence event itself is theorized to have been caused by a failed attempt to shatter the borders between our world and the domain of absurdity in which they reside. Demons are capable of giving the impression of emotions, that they think and care as we do, but it is as false as the forms they conjure into this world.

Do not summon, at all costs.

 

_Fingers tapping keys._ <ctrl + F> <"Dipper"> <0 of 0>

_He's almost insulted. Even if he were up to something, he wouldn't be stupid enough to go giving out his_ <true> _name, give him_ some _credit._

_Pictures flash by as his father scrolls down. Not of the demons, never them._ <not public information> _Fallen trees, fires, rubble, ruins, smoke, storms. Victims, or at least what remained of them._

_His father's fingers shake now as they put out another search. The results seem almost pleased to inform him that half demons, for the time being, remain yet relegated to fiction._ <he is not a half breed <just unfinished>> _Dipper's attention, however, remains arrested by something else._

_Summoning, huh?_

 

`<there are some things even you shouldn't know>`

 

**3 w/ 4 d/ 9 h**

“Mabel, who is that?” Dipper whispers, tapping her shoulder for attention and pointing out the lanky kid in flannel wiping the glass cases in the gift shop. He’s been getting that déjà vu feeling stronger than ever watching him, but he knows this is the first time he’s seen anyone other than Wendy and themselves working here.

“Wendy’s cousin. Isn’t he just,  _adorable_?” Mabel squeals, bouncing up and down a little.

“Do we know like.. _know_ him from anywhere?” he tries.

“No, but we will soon, brother. Soon.” She narrows her eyes in that way he knows means she’s found her next target for the week.

“How soon?” He can’t help the smile.

“Soon soon. Like. Imminently!” she shouts, lazy vaulting over the counter and walking up to the new kid.

Dipper misses out on the pickup line she uses because as soon as the kid turns around

  
_Here is Henry, 29 years old, up watching the night sky, as he has done for years since the first time after that careless remark, since Dipper had appeared behind him and lowered his voice, told him ‘better you didn’t know’, and Henry had gulped and nodded and understood._

_He looks up at the moon, gaze unflinching and thoughts quiet, as if trying to burn its hallowed image into his retinas for safe-keeping, as he would do for years to come, as he would do until the day his soul caught fire and he grew sharp teeth of his own at long last, though they weren’t the traditional sort. (It’d been inevitable. Dipper had known as much that the day would come. It was a lesson carved unambiguously into his ~~memory~~  by a young Willow’s fey gaze on his back. This was the consequence of being loved by terrible things. This was what happened when you let them too near, held them too close.)_

_Then Henry would sleep like the dead and when he did stare up at the moon it would be with the slightest grin on his face, like it had told him an old joke. And then he would turn away._

_But for now he performed his strange little vigil; the ever-watchful guardian._

 

it’s turned loose, the name that had been scratching away somewhere inside his head like a trapped rat.

"Henry!" Dipper exclaims before he can stop himself.

The other boy looks over at him and quirks an eyebrow, expecting.

"Um... Wendy's.. told us so much about you..." Dipper finishes awkwardly.

Henry just nods an acknowledgement, suddenly very interested in getting back to his work.

Mabel stages a retreat for the time being, rejoins her brother behind the counter. “What was that about?”

“I’m... not sure.”

  

**3 w/ 4 d/ 10 h**

Dipper sits with his back pressed to the bathroom door, imagining that all the weight he forces against it goes to forcing away the apprehension he's been trying to shake since earlier. Deep breaths. The sooner he can calm down, the sooner he can get a handle on the problem, the sooner he can deal with the source of his disquiet.

When he's ready, he picks up his pencil again, turns to 'Known Issues', and forces his right hand to stop shaking.

Supporters and close friends were bad enough. But he hadn't been able to recognize  _his own brother,_ a person with whom he'd lived for most of his adult life, on sight? What had taken him so long? It couldn't be that he hadn't personally met Henry this young, that wasn't it, he Knew what Henry would look like at this age, any age actually. But recognition took more than knowing what someone looked like, it took that spark to jump the gap, those neurons firing that said this is the same voice that becomes the one to chastise you for taking the kids on that field trip to the 2nd dimension, the same hair you would ruffle from behind and vanish (at least til his antlers grew in) because you had a vague idea that was something human siblings did and because you knew he'd always been too tall for that sort of thing, the same hands that had grasped yours to trade life for life. That the connection wasn't made immediately seriously shook him.

Calm down. Calm. Down.

This could be a good thing (the best, even!), he tells himself, turning to reason for consolation, turning in the literal sense too, wetting a finger and flipping forward a few pages to 'Plan J'. Here is someone else he could trust besides Mabel. Here is someone else who can help him. ~~Here is someone else he should miss terribly~~. ~~And yet~~.

~~And yet~~. ~~When he first saw him~~. ~~His heart hadn't moved~~.

Dipper makes some amendments to the plan's outline, adds a new item to the checklist.

'Trust Henry Pines? Y/N'

 

**** **3 w/ 5 d/ 10 h**

Just because Dipper is sitting on the barrel by the counter and scribbling furiously into the notebook doesn’t mean he isn’t paying attention.

“Why are you rollerskating indoors?” Henry is asking, leaning on his broom.

Stan had taken a handful of bikers passing through on The Extended Tour (in the Mystery Cart around the grounds, making up stories about everything he sees; $15 extra) and so wasn’t around to get on their case. Wendy had taken the opportunity to sneak away and talk to her friends out front. Dipper can hear them too, can hear Thompson whining, “ _You guys_ , that’s taken super out of context.” (“Your face is out of context.” “Your  _mom_  is out of context.” Sounds of rough-housing.)

“Just not feeling all that hot today. You know how it is,” Mabel answers as she shoots the duck through the rack of t-shirts.

Henry doesn’t.

She can tell from his expression, so she slides over to lean in close and whisper—maybe whisper isn’t the right word but, well, compared to her ordinary volume—in his ear, “Okay, so. Can you keep a secret?”

Henry could.

A wide smile splits her face as he nods and she indicates the sparkly pair of flower-themed skates. “Rollerskates? They’re the secret to happiness.”

"Rollerskates... ” his mouth says. His brain hasn’t quite caught up with it.

“Mmhmm,” she nods sagely. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. But ask yourself, Sir Skeptic, have you ever seen an unhappy person on skates?”

He opens his mouth. She waits.

He slowly closes it again.

“Y’see? You can’t be sad on skates, it’s like the first law of fun, dude.”

She skates a wide circle around him, grinning triumphantly as if to prove the point irrefutable, before stopping again. “Did you want to try?”

It isn’t really a question.

 

**** **3 w/ 6 d/ 18 h**

“Hey Dipper.” Mabel, lying on her bed, sketching stick figures with hearts around them.

“Yeah, Mabel?” Dipper, playing catch with the wall across from him and a ping pong ball. The motion helped him think.

“I think Henry might be my soulmate,” she says, adding jetpacks to the stick figures.

“Yep.” Bounce, bounce, catch. Bounce, bounce, catch. _Trust Henry Pines? Y/N_

“I know you’re gonna say it and yeah, I might have said that about a goldfish once, but like I really  _really_  mean it this time.” The stick figures are now fighting back-to-back to protect the town against a horde of hideous magenta gargoyles.

“I know.” 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. _Is the wall nearer than yesterday? Better take this room's dimensions again._

“I mean have you  _seen_  how cute he is Dipper, like really looked at him?” Mabel rolls over, as if posing the question to the ceiling.

“Uh, I think he’s definitely a human with like. I dunno. Flesh and eyes?" Nailed it.

“And he totally likes me too, like he was sweeping and I caught him looking at me and then he walked straight into a wall. We have watched enough cartoons to know what that means, Dipper!”

“It’s undeniable all right.”

“So will you pleeeease help me get us some more time together?” she begs, sitting up and clasping her hands together.

“Sure.”

“I’ll help you with your dumb conspiracy things!”

“Yeah that’s fine. Hey, those aren't dumb!”

“Yes!” she crows triumphantly, falling back onto the bed with a satisfied whump.

Dipper smiles and, too distracted by his sister’s theatrics to catch it in time, the ball hits him square in the eye.

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_He’s humming it again._ That _tune. The constant background static he’s been hearing for months_ <since he first saw the eyes>. _(What? What eyes?)_   _It feels familiar and old, like a long forgotten favorite he cannot for the life of him place._

_To make matters worse, it’s incomplete. He isn’t sure how he can tell, but part of the strain is missing and what he hears(? (remembers?)) is just the final few notes. Despite this, it sticks like the catchiest thing he’s ever heard. The missing notes bother him, niggling like a loose tooth, and he tries filling them in, feeling them out._

_It’s fine, usually._

_Not today._

_There’s a magical storm brewing on the horizon, granting him physicality, setting the sky awash with undulating ribbons of variegated neon light and cloud formations of stampeding mythical creatures and gaping, grinning faces. Not that he could see any of it now; Mabel’s lowered the blinds. She’s also lent him some disposable earplugs (the kind she wears when harvesting her mandrakes or knitting with banshees) and is currently pressing her purple earmuffs to his newly pointed ears, her arms wrapped around his head._

_“How's this gonna help exactly?” Dipper asks before he can stop himself. He’s hardly able to hear his own question._

_He thinks Mabel says something like a confident “I know what I'm doing!" in return._

_He has half a mind to tell her the sound doesn’t come from outside, that if anything it only comes across louder in here, alone with his thoughts in his plush prison._

_Instead he feels the slight tremble to her grip and thinks of the last time_

[ _“Dipper!”_

_The urgency in her tone has him spinning on his heels, eyes darting for danger. “What, what is it?!”_

_“You’re bleeding!” Mabel indicates her ears and Dipper’s hands fly to his own. His right hand drips gold when he pulls it away._

_His right hand._

_The fingernails on it are thick and cruelly curved._

_He blinks._

_His hand is fine. No blood, let alone claws._

_A flicker of grey seen out of the corner of his eye lifts his head, but he only sees Mabel there, all warm orange_ <worry> _and chartreuse_ <confusion> _._

_“There was blood. There was," she stresses, as though he wouldn't believe her. “You were scratching up your ears pretty badly, didn't you even notice?”_ ]

_the music was so loud. His hand comes up to squeeze her wrist. A show of gratitude, and a promise that it isn’t going to happen again. That he won’t let it._

…

_Disco girl_

_Dum Dum Dum._

_Coming through_

_Dum Dum Dum Dum._

_That girl is you_

_**Dum-Dum-Dum. DUM-DUM-DUM.** _

…

_When he comes back to himself, he is standing in the midst of a scene of destruction._

_The remnants of his sister’s stuffed animals are tearing one another to stuffing, a bow-tied brown bear pulling the head off a limbless beagle while a panda pummels a pony trying to buck it off. Black flames devour her several Sev’ral Timez posters at a leisurely pace while his framed collection of teeth, feathers, and bones of numerous species of magical creatures has been turned to solid chocolate. Something the general shape of an emaciated deer sits cross-legged on his bed, one of his sister’s buttercup flower crowns decorating its antlers, mouth unhinged and open wide to reveal a set of shark’s teeth and a pair of eyes in the back of its throat, which are fixed on his copy of_ Code Cracking and Cryptograms for Morons _. Dipper can’t help but be impressed to see that the creature has already made it to the bit in Chapter 4 on Rail Fence Ciphers. Mabel’s own bed features a swirling, dark green portal_ <alt-uni 1218> _slowly ingesting her bedsheets._

_Mabel herself is gone. A watery memory gives the impression of her running off down the stairs. He could have sworn he saw shades of grey._

_“All right, party’s over buddy, time to get back to your own world," Dipper tells his guest in a language he has never heard before. The deer glances at its wristwatch (designed to look like a turtle with the clock set in its shell; definitely Mabel’s). It stands up onto its hind legs, shuts its mouth, and leaps backward through the portal on the opposite bed, which proceeds to blink out of existence. Dipper notes with mild annoyance that it took his book along with it; he hadn’t finished that yet._

_That taken care of, Dipper turns to face the worst of the mess: the pigs. Because of course, Mabel’s obsession had predated Waddles._

_Each and every one of her piggy bank collection had been reduced to porcelain dust, glass fragments, and shards._

_The most precious of all had been an ancient blue-backed pig with a sweet, broad smile. It had been the very first, the one given to his sister at a young age by their late grandmother. Though she’d never come out and told him just how much it meant to her, he could see how dear the heirloom was in the way the usually exuberant, carefree girl held and cleaned it with utmost care, movements deliberate and slow. She did not even keep coins inside, as it did not have an alternative exit to retrieve them other than smashing._

_The others were souvenirs or presents. Like her pictures and scrapbook, Mabel frequently insisted on getting one in the wake of every adventure embarked on. Each had contained its share of memories, worth far more than the dusty change in their bellies._ _She had assembled such a collection as to strain the plain wooden shelf that supported them. Now, they were gone. Ruined beyond repair._

_Why would he have done this? He_ had _done this, right?_

_..._

_Can’t remember. Trying to recall only makes him feel cramped._

_No. You know what? That’s enough._

_He is so, so sick of not knowing._

_A wave of forbidden Knowledge crashes over him, intent on sweeping him away. H_ _e welcomes it, this time. Even the fathomless abyss in his head can’t cool the glowing coals of his anger_ <towards this dumb power <towards himself for his inability to restrain it>> _. (Frustration?)_ <he cannot view his own aura <look into his own soul> to parse his emotions for their contents <any more than he can inspect the arrangement of collagen in his own corneas>>

_“I need to know,” he demands aloud of no one_ <of everything> _, “Tell me how to fix this."_

_He can feel it starting to recede from him already, draining away too quickly for him to glean anything other than unhelpful impressions._ <relative humidity of 56%> <Waddles' favorite food is peaches> <there's an old bugbear in their basement <making its way up the stairs one step at a time>> _He grits his teeth and scrambles to keep hold, but it slips through his fingers, as it always does, like so much sand._

[ _When he was ~~alive~~ ~~human~~ younger, he dreamed._

_Occasionally the dream was pleasant. Sometimes he would feel himself beginning to wake before he was ready, when all he wanted to do was dwell a while longer in his fantastical world. In such instances, as he was starting to lose the dream, he would lie stock-still and imagine the dream as best he could, until the dream could again take hold of his senses and lead him back to that place._

_He doesn’t recall the dreams, of course. Not a one. Not anymore._ ]

_Focus, damn it._

_He closes his eyes. Imagines the_ <not> _water swelling again, imagines himself caught in its embrace and sinking further and further down (is there an up?) into it, so far the world outside becomes the dream._

 

_The flood of_

<down the street a young girl is writing 'Today's Menu' in curling cursive <left-handed> on glass <with an index of refraction of 1.52>> <the mural of a dark-eyed woman <'SHELLEY'> <brought to life by the storm outside> keeps advising her to try again <until she gets the letters just right>>

_pauses on its way._

 

<what will you give?>

 

_Some distant part of him, something warm and self-aware and not submerged, reacts, rebels in abject fear. The presence(?), whatever it is, only ever intruded in his mind as undigested scraps of data, as arresting visions of what had been and could be. It had only ever spoken_ of _him—as though he were an uninteresting character set in a footnote of a 13.82 billion volume story—not_ to _him. This was watching the news on television one day and the anchor leaning in to whisper that you've left the iron on in the other room._

_Worse: For it to ask him a question implied that it awaited a response, implied this body of unlimited information was somehow conscious and discerning. He knew next to nothing about it and it knew everything there was, is, and ever would be, ever could be, to know about him and there was no way to escape from it, it's everywhere, it's here, it's in his fucking brain playing keep away with his fucking thoughts. He has never felt so vulnerable._

_Mercifully, the rest of him has no room left for surprise. He understands what it is he has to do._

_“How about this? I can fix the damage I’ve done, and in exchange…” The words were out before he could consider their meaning. He doesn’t rightly know if what he wants to do is within his power to grant. He has never before attempted to use his powers for something constructive, for fixing. His powers only broke, they couldn’t build, couldn't be controlled save on a whim of their own, wasn’t that what It always said? Entropy. Something about entropy._

_Dipper opens his eyes._

_"Yeah…?” Mabel prompts. She’s sitting on her haunches in front of him, leaning her elbows on her thighs, and staring at him intently with an expression he'd seen her wear before while trying to catch a firefly (the fiery magical sort, not the lightning bug). She doesn't seem upset. Clutched in her left hand is an item he hasn't seen since she stowed it away at the end of the summer: the grappling hook. He doesn’t remember curling in on himself, doesn’t remember sitting down, but it doesn't seem as though much time has passed._

_There’s something very wrong about this, what he's going to do. Well, not wrong, not that. Just… odd. Unnatural? (Ha. Like a demon could be one to talk.)_

<against his nature>

_In spite of that, he holds out his hand, his mouth dry. “Mabel, listen. I can fix all the pigs I broke, but if I do..."_

 

<not enough>

<not enough>

<not enough>

<sufficient>

 

_" ... if I do, you'll have to stop collecting them from now on. That's how this works. That's the only way it_ can _work, the only way I can fix it, and I'm so, so sorry. Do we have a deal?”_

_Mabel’s eyes flick first to his hand, then to his eyes. Then to something just above them, where her gaze lingers a moment. He doesn't dare imagine what she sees._

_Then, unhurried, with that same rare gentleness she’d shown the piggy bank, she takes his hand. “Deal, bro.”_

_Blue flames ignite their clasped hands as the mental barriers that surround him are overwhelmed once more._ _This time, when the undiluted knowledge flows into him, it lingers. Long enough for him to parse a fraction of it, long enough for him to Know what to do._ _He snaps his fingers and, as though driven by a sentient gust of wind, the dust on Mabel's shelf rises up. Atom by atom, one after another, each of the pigs is restored to its former condition in its former place of honor._

_“Woooooah. Okay, gotta admit, that was seriously cool," Mabel comments when he’s finished, straightening up to test one of the bigger banks for herself, weighing it in her hands. Dipper’s eyes pick out the blue-backed pig on top, smiling thoughtlessly back at him as the secrets of the universe hide themselves away among the stars once again, and he breathes a sigh of relief. “How did you_ do _that?”_

_“Beats me," he answers honestly. It would take another deal to perform such a feat again, to coax the arcane knowledge back._

_It isn't entirely gone, however. He can feel it. A minuscule bit of that vast ocean remained behind, as though when it'd possessed him full to bursting, it'd stretched his container of a being just a bit further past its previous limits._

_He snaps his fingers to test it. Nothing. He tries again._

_"What are you up to now?"_

_"Wait for it."_

_On the fourth try, he gets sparks._

_On the ninth, a tiny cobalt flame blinks into a precarious existence atop his right index finger. Both pairs of eyes on it widen in disbelief._

_"Bro... Brooo. Did you do that, like on purpose?" Mabel asks, shaking him excitedly._

_"Y-yeah," he stutters, and they both break into laughter, although nothing is funny, Dipper letting the flame twist and curl around his knuckles and fingers like one of those demonic caterpillars that were always destroying the neighbor's garden. At least until Dipper realizes he completely forgot about the rest of their room._

_“Whoops," he summarizes, banishing the fire and running a hand through his hair as Sir Cuddleton the Third roars his victory from the summit of a mountain of stuffed animal parts._

_“Eh, that’s okay. I’ve been over them for a while, remember?” Mabel says, looking down on the ashes of her posters. "Although, it's too bad the portal Jeff came out of is gone, I really wanted to see what was down there. Guess I went and grabbed my grappling hook outta the garage for no reason, huh." As she raises her eyes, she lets out a gasp._

_“What?”_

_“Is that…?” She pushes past her brother, clearing the ravaged room to take a bite out of his collection of paranormal odds and ends. “Mmm! Ohhhmigosh.”_

_“Hey! What if it’s cursed and turns you to chocolate too or something?” he admonishes, following close behind._

_“You’re right, that sounds amazing,” Mabel misreads, mumbling around a mouthful. She starts breaking off more pieces and stuffing them into the emergency snacks pockets hidden on her person._

_Dipper sighs, picking up a stray chunk of chocolate and examining it. “Ugh, it’s gonna take me forever to build this back up.” He takes a small bite for himself and makes a face. “Ew gross, dark chocolate.”_

_Mabel lifts the entirety of the remaining collection off the wall. “Oh well, more for me!”_

_..._

_No upsurge_ <> _that night. Nor the next._

_The creeping fever too, the one that seemed to take great pleasure in setting his very being ablaze, vanished without ceremony, broken at last._

_Of course, he's relieved._

_Of course, he's apprehensive._

 

`<mind the gaps> <they're widening>`

 

**1 m /1** **w/ 1 d/ 12 h**

_Due to weather conditions, the library is closed._

Dipper looks up from the sign in the window to the unbroken blue of the afternoon sky above. The incessant birdsong that accompanied them on the journey over continues unabated. He scowls.

"But... it's beautiful out."

"I know, right?" Mabel chimes in, awestruck. "Librarians sure are wise."

 

**1 m /3 w /1 d/ 11 h**

“Henry John Pines…”

“Corduroy,” Henry corrects, quietly.

“Henry John Pines,” Dipper repeats in his solemn tone, staring hard at the redhead seated across from him at the cash register (keeping Wendy’s seat warm for her until she returns from her rooftop break). “I, Alcor, Master of Nightmares, Lord of Darkness —”

“Dorkness!” Mabel corrects, loudly.

“Will either of you let me finish?” Dipper complains, momentarily breaking character, massaging the space between his eyes with his thumbs. Satisfied with their silence, he straightens his back and clears his throat. “Lord of Darkness, have summoned you to the, uh"—he glances at the tags on the showcase of items currently for sale for inspiration—"Antechamber of Anachronism to bestow upon you a mission, if you so choose to accept the title of Woodsman.”

“And this… Woodsman guy. He's good in this game, like a knight or something?” Henry asks, sitting back in his seat. The movement causes his glasses to slide down his nose a bit so that he overlooks them.

“Chaotic good, but sure, something like that.”

Mabel narrows her eyes and backs up in order to make a picture frame with her fingers surrounding Henry. “Hmm, I dunno. He’s got more of a… lawful look to him, don’tcha think?”

“True, but then, his magic derives from my magic,” Dipper explains away. “Besides, this way, the two of you match.”

Mabel thrusts her sweater-swaddled fists into the air. “Yes!”

“So, the Woodsman…” Henry says, bringing them back on track.

"Right." Dipper holds out his makeshift journal. "Just place your left hand here and raise your right."

Henry gingerly lays one hand over the outline of Dipper's own as if he expected the book to rear up underneath it and bite him (to be fair, similar incidents had occurred in the past handling particular texts in the Shack's (future?) library). On Dipper's signal, Mabel lights the two candles on the counter and turns off the gift shop lights, transporting the three of them to a place less familiar. Dipper knew this to be a form of magic in and of itself, one that invoked a sense of presence, felt but not seen, not for want of trying. For some, the feeling meant hushed tones, eyes locked firmly on the shadows every chance they get. For others, it felt like a shedding of pretense, a freeing of constraints, offering safety in secrecy. Henry squints in the sudden darkness, pushes his glasses back up his nose, but Dipper notes that he doesn't shift in his chair, that he leans forward, elbows on the counter.

Mabel holds up the seaweed colored sweater, lazily painted question mark facing Henry. Dipper tries to keep his tone steady and serious. "Do you solemnly swear to wear this uniform, the whole uniform, and nothing but the uniform?"

"You... you guys are taking this game a little far, huh," Henry deflects.

Mabel shrugs, pretending poorly that she does not care whether he passes their so-called initiation. "You want in on our seedy shenanigans, ya gotta wear it."

"Neither of you are wearing those."

"That's because..." Mabel's eyes flash to Dipper for help. "Oh! Dipper _is_ wearing one, the uniform is different for each person. Haven't you noticed him wearing the same thing every day? That's why."

Dipper narrows his eyes at her. The real reason was because past him hadn't brought any other clothes.

"And you can't see mine cuz I wear my sweaters over it, obvs," Mabel finishes, covering all her bases. "So are you in or are you...  _in_?"

"Fine... I swear," Henry agrees, not knowing about the rainbow-striped lunging tiger decorating the back. "Given those options, how could I not? So, what's the quest?"

"Not so fast!" Mabel tuts. "First, a trial!"

"Trial?" Dipper and Henry are at once mirrors of one another's confusion. Mabel tosses the shirt over Henry's face, eagerly pulling out one of the red cardboard boxes with a hole cut into the top from underneath the counter as he pulls on the garment. The box is emblazoned with a yellow question mark on each of its faces.

"Yeah, you gotta stick your hand in a Box of Mystery!" Mabel shakes the box, giving off a sound like boots being pulled from mud.

Henry hesitates, having already grown acclimated to his work environment. "It's not broken glass in there, is it?"

"I am ninety-six percent sure it won't be."

After a few moments of internal deliberation and more motivational box jostling by Mabel, Henry takes a deep breath, rolls up his sleeves, and plunges one hand inside, squeezing his eyes shut. He makes a face as though he'd just bitten into a rotten apple. "Are these... peeled grapes?"

Mabel's face falls. "What? No, they're s'posed to be eyeballs."

"Oh. Well then." Henry leaves it at that, not wanting to accidentally hurt her feelings and uncertain where those particular eggshells lie. His eyes reopen. "Can I take my hand out now?"

"Has he been sufficiently prepared?" Dipper asks Mabel, the true question being whether or not she was finished messing with her crush.

Thankfully, she nods, leans back against the counter with her head slightly lowered in what she likely believed to be a cool pose. "Yeah, I mean. I _guess_ he'll do."

"Right," Dipper begins as Mabel turns the lights back on. "Your quest, Woodsman, shall be to procure an enchanted axe from the dread Wendigo and bring it to the edge of the Forgotten Forest in two weeks time, the night of the full moon." Dipper opens his journal up to the page indexed with a bookmark of a tabby cat wearing reading glasses and taps the hand-drawn map sprawling across both pages, displaying them to Henry. “Here to be exact.”

“Couldn't you guys just ask her for it?" Henry asks, prompting Mabel to raise her eyebrows at Dipper.

"No, shut up, don't say it," Dipper groans.

_"Yeah Dipper, how come we don't just ask her for it?"_

_"Meeting is adjourned."_

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

  _Upon the 407th completion of his circuit round their room, Dipper, mind made up, abruptly stops pacing. "I'll just have to go mad."_

_"Is that so?" Mabel, at the desk, hasn't looked up from her homework._

_"It's so. I've looked at this from every conceivable angle, and a number that aren't. It's the only way."_

_"Oh, well help me with this first, I left my calculator downstairs and I don't wanna get up. If the cycle time is eight hundred megahertz, what's the corresponding clock speed?"_

<the multiplicative inverse of 800,000,000 is 0.00000000125>

_"One point two five nanoseconds."_

_"Thanks, Diane."_

_"Don't mention it."_

_The sound of pencil scratching paper is the only sound for a solid minute. Dipper returns to pacing while he waits._

<408>

[ _"Dr. Walker told me I probably bounce and stuff when I'm thinking cuz I'm actually trying to stimulate my brain enough to be able to focus on the thing I need to do."_ ]

<409>

[ _"I know, Mabel, I'm always there with you. What, you think I pace for the same reason?"_ ]

<410>

[ _"I'm just saying you do that a LOT when you're onto something. How are you even doing that when you can't touch the floor?"_ ]

<411>

[ _"I'm not really doing it on purpose, but given that it only works until I think about it, I'd assume it has something to do with conviction. Like when I float or sink. I have to believe on some level that there is a surface there to walk on and that I_ _can be acted upon by gravity."_ ]

<412>

[ _"You're really starting to get the hang of this stuff, huh?" Mabel elbows him, grinning. "One_ step _at a time."_  ]

<413>

_Dipper stops in his tracks. "Wait. Diane?"_

_"Yeah. I mean the narrator," Mabel clarifies, stuffing her finished assignment into her backpack to be inevitably lost_ <and rediscovered in her English folder three days past due> _._

_"It's not a narrator. What's there to narrate?"_ <the title is in reference to its role in his newfound propensity for informative non sequiturs> _Ah. He thought he was getting better at containing those outbursts._

_"There you go again," Mabel criticizes with a roll of her eyes. "You only ever tell me what It_ _isn't, never what It_ is _."_

_"I haven't come up with an accurate description yet. And honestly? I've stopped trying to at this point." He doesn't have to explain to her of all people how discussing It, even thinking about it too long, tended to push his panic button._

_"So what I'm hearing is, whatever we call It is probably wrong."_

_"More or less."_

_"So if I wanna call her Diane, that's like equally as incorrect as 'all the secrets of the universe', and therefore just as valid a name while being less of a mouthful." Taking his moment of frustrated silence as assent, Mabel continues. "Cool so, that all cleared up, I gotta counter-proposal to your madness plan, flawless as it may be."_

_"I'm all ears."_

_"We get that evil song unstuck."_

_Dipper laughs, a single humorless bark, and their bedroom window rattles with it. "Mabel, I've tried_ everything _."_

_"That's just it, Dipper." Mabel's chair swivels to face him with an awful squeak (their parents had warned her not to play in it so much). "_ You've _tried everything. It's about time we take off the kid gloves and bring the full force of the Power of Mabel to bear against this thing, don't you think? Did you try knocking it out with a catchier song yet?"_

_"You know how no matter how much Dad fusses with the radio, it only plays pop music? That was me. Doesn't work."_

_"Okay maybe... maybe it's like a WiFi signal?" Mabel tries. "If you stand around different places and it gets louder or quieter, that could mean that it's coming from somewhere. Then we could track it to its source and kick its butt!"_

_Unfortunately, no matter whether he's locked in the closet ("You're trapped!" "Mabel, I can just phase through the —" "YOU'RE TRAPPED!"), crouching under the kitchen table, or floating aimlessly about the backyard, the noise neither diminishes nor swells. (Dipper refuses to try the basement. "That's Fred's territory, he won it fair and square in rock-paper-scissors and I wouldn't want to step on his toes now when he's so close to the top.")_

_"How about distractions? Not to brag, but I'm practically an expert at being distracted!" Mabel excitedly produces the cheaper of her two sketchpads from her backpack and begins to work on a diagram, Dipper overseeing her shoulder. "Here's what we do. Plan alpha: you're gonna need to recite poetry while solving a sudoku puzzle while doing the apology dance while I scream at the top of my lungs..."_

_..._

_"I don't think this is working," Dipper begins to protest following the failure of plan theta_ <involving answering physics problems while making loop-the-loops in the air while watching television <attempting to beat Duck-tective to the solution to the mystery of the week>> _._

_"Working? What do you... oh right, that."_ <she already came to that conclusion post plan gamma <and continued chiefly out of amusement>> _"Man, trying to get you to let go of a thought's like me trying to get gum out of my braces," Mabel remarks, sitting upside down on the couch. She presses a button on the remote, turns off the television. "It didn't help at all?"_

_"If anything, there's a few more notes to it."_

_"But it's not a complete thing, just bits and pieces, right?"_

_"Yeah. They keep repeating over and over like the hook from hell, but I know that isn't all there is to it. It's too... abrupt?"_

_"Maybe you're supposed to finish it," she says, turning over to lie on her stomach, elbows propping up her head. "That sounds like the kind of super annoying thing a classical magic curse would have you do to break it, and a musical curse sounds pretty classical magic."_

_"But how would we do that? I can't play an instrument," he points out._

_"What about the tuba? Or that time Mom had us take piano lessons?"_

_"We don't talk about that."_

_"Robbie said he could teach you how to play guitar sometime. If you could hold out for a few months —"_

_"Ǹ̨͡͝o̧͟͢.́" Mabel doesn't flinch at the echo anymore, but the sight of tangerine_ <unease> _streaking through her aura motivates him to gather himself quickly. "I mean, I can't play an instrument as in, you know, I spend too much time not being real. I wouldn't be able to touch it."_

_That seems to do the trick as splashes of carmine_ <contemplation> _overtake the unwelcome hue._ <he's yet to spot an aura that acts quite as hers does <coloring and recoloring so completely at the mildest provocation <always warm <even the more negative moods>>> <feeling with her whole heart <for better or worse>>> <it makes him wonder at the palette of his own aura <he imagines <stubborn> <familiar> stains <oil-based perhaps> <rosewood> <walnut> <black cherry> <fumed oak> <hard maple> <more <coherent> <consistent> in form <far from her animated corona <bright enough at times to trail afterimages like stardust> <he knows he's not as <willing to reconsider> <forgiving>>> <though not inflexible>>>>

_"EARTH TO DIPPER. Remember what you said, about how stuff works when you're invisible?"_

_Dipper blinks, canting his head to one side. "What specifically?"_

_Mabel laughs gently. He surmises that he must have missed something. "Close your eyes, I want to try something different."_

_"Uh. All right," he agrees, doing so._

_"All of them."_

_"What?"_

_"Good. Now, this is going to sound bad, but I'm gonna need you_ not _to ignore the evil music. I KNOW, I KNOW, we'd be all over some guy in a movie for that, but trust me. Pretend you're like, in the shower, and you've got one of your BABBA CDs on."_

_Despite the lack of a physical form, Dipper shifts uncomfortably_ <for more reasons than one> _._

_"It's going somewhere, I promise," Mabel reassures once more, as if sensing his reservations_ <no 'as if' about it> _._

_So, because it is Mabel, Dipper suspends his doubts, just for the moment, and lets the world fade out, focusing on the melody._

_Truthfully, it is not unpleasant. That fact had only made him all the more suspicious_ <familiarity with the unfamiliar> <the first time he experienced déjà vu <at ten years old> he became temporarily convinced their reality was no longer credible <<of course> no sooner had he barricaded their bedroom door against the world of impostors with their dresser than Mabel had to use the bathroom>> _. For the life of him, he cannot pick out the instruments, the vehicles by which the sound (some sort of high-pitched whistling?) must have come into being. Still, he expects his imagination to spark, to see with his mind's eye some frenetic scene inspired by the music to which it is choreographed. Nothing comes; he is aware only of the blackness behind his eyelids._

_Wait. Not an immobile, featureless darkness. Darkness like that beyond the headlights in the middle of the night, lifted moment-to-moment like a magician's cloth to reveal the way forward while obscuring the way back. ~~Darkness like that under the sea, impossibly vast and full of secrets, rendering any search for them futile, foolhardy~~. Another pair of headlights in the nothingness ahead, or, not headlights. Eyes? He's seen those before. (Where?)_

_"Is that supposed to be a violin?"_

_Dipper opens his own eyes and immediately registers two things, in succession. First, ludicrously, he is, in fact, holding a violin somehow—jaw to chinrest, one hand supporting the neck, the other paused in drawing the bow across the strings—despite not being physical. Second, the violin itself_ <Maple wood> <exactly the right size for his spindly arms> _is translucent._

_He says, "You're seeing this, right?"_

_"Yeah, your posture is excellent."_

_"I mean —"_

_"You actually looked relaxed for like, five whole seconds. You should do air guitar next." Mabel cocks her head. "Well? You gonna keep playing or what? It didn't sound too bad."_

_"I don't know how."_

_"Well yeah, genius, not in your brain at least, but that's the idea! Just keep pretending like you do. Some part of you knows what's up."_

_Dipper nods and contemplates the strings a moment, trying to recall a talent show scene from a movie they'd watched with their mother once, then bows across them at what he believes to be the correct angle. The illusory instrument shrieks in response, like Waddles during a thunderstorm, leading Mabel to grimace._

_"Okay, maybe a liiiiittle practice wouldn't hurt."_

_..._

_"I think it's bothering them," Mabel mentions one day._

 

`<that day>`

`You think I'm not ready for this one? Go on, hit me.`

 

_An understatement. That he is incorporeal makes no difference; their parents always react to his playing. It had been hard to tell the source given their behavior in response was not consistent_ <<the first time> they had both been stricken with dizzy spells> <<the second time> they both fainted> <<the third time> <during the middle of the night> they both woke with scrambled speech <lasting nearly an hour>> _, but in time there could be no doubt as to the cause. They need to put this curse to rest for good._

_If he can just_ <play it once <perfectly>> _, he's certain it'll go away._   _Easier prophesied than done._

_On the rare occasions he has the house all to himself_ <though Mabel reported no ill effects <he wants to be careful>> _, he practices, fiddling with the fiddle. Feels himself getting a little closer each time._ <he calls it S.P.T. <spectral proprioception training> which Mabel naturally pronounces "spit" when discussing any sort of game plan>

_Then one day_

 

`<that day>`

 

_it clicks._

_He's absently whistling the high wordless song as though he has always known_ <Known> _it when the realization hits that this is it,_ this is the one _._ _The prospect of finishing at last and expelling the music from his mind holds him utterly transfixed, all else rendered temporarily auxiliary as he reaches for_ <summons> _his violin._ <already there in his hands> _He can sense time itself warp as he draws bow across strings, feel past and future flee in the face of an all-consuming now. This music is a spell of some kind, of that much they were convinced, but whether he is caster or subject at this point he really couldn't tell_ <couldn't care less either> _._

_One by one, pairs of eyes snap open in the dark (where had the light gone off to?), surrounding him as he plays his poison. Eyes like the pair from his(?) dream(?), shifting from small, dark bulbs to black and gold set far apart, pupils stretching themselves horizontal. He cannot stop now; the momentum carries him on._

_The bodies form next. Sheep. Rams and ewes. All manner of fur, yellow, white, grey, and stranger, roiling tendrils, wisps of cloud, fleece the color of wallpaper samples. What an odd audience. An audience nonetheless, one he very well cannot stand before as he is now. Without interrupting his concert, he lets the clothes he died in_ <that stubborn self image> _molt, become a suit cut clean_ <and pressed> _from the night sky, gold accents taking inspiration from a more nebulous source. His sneakers burn up in a flash of blue flame, leaving a pair of dress shoes in its wake._ <the hat was lost the day the world ended and kept turning <but in its former place the shadow of a top hat hovers>> _The transformation does not go unappreciated by the flock, whose inhuman spirits soar with anticipation, with recognition._

_When he nears the finale, he perceives their hellish armaments_ <fangs> <scales> <tails> <barbs> <claws> <needles> <talons> <pincers> <beaks> <horns> <quills> _and knows that despite what their general shape may suggest, these creatures are no prey. He plays the final notes and the circle of sheep start to spin, close in, leaping one by one by one (he counts them as they go, but_ <of course> _it doesn't help), dissolving through the frozen figures of their chosen sacrifices (sacrificial lambs!) l_ _ike a malevolent mist, leaving them choking and gasping in their wake._

_Dipper can feel gratitude waft up from the crowd of creatures like a round of applause, thanking him for making them whole_ <again> _, and he can't help but grin and take a slow, shallow bow. He tries to gauge the length of his performance as time reasserts itself, decides it could have been months_ <hours> _since he began._

_Not that he can recall just how the music went. It's finally over._

_What a convoluted ritual it required just to get some lousy song out of his head, some part of him thinks, annoyed._

_"What happened?!" Mabel's voice screams. (When did she get home?) He doesn't start at the sound of it. (When did he get to the living room?) He licks his lips. There's confusion in it, sugar-sweet, giving way to something rarer, cool on his tongue like ice_ <horror> _. He hasn't known hunger since he found the name for his kind, but a pit opens wide within him now, craving more (of what?). "What are these things?"_ <meaning the sheep><<of course> she can see> <here is a chance for introductions>

_"Oh, these guys? They're my nightmares," he tells her conversationally in a voice not his own at all, too high and nasal and echoing_ <and permanent> <<somehow> he is not surprised> _. He hasn't bothered to turn towards her, hasn't seen her face. Just stares down at the writhing figures of two middle-aged humans, the minds through which his Flock had been_ <re> _born. "You know, I wondered what they got up to when I stopped sleeping."_

`<it won't last long <not without her>>`

`You're in rare form today, huh, Nancy? Let me tell you a secret of my own.`

`One of these days? I'm gonna prove you wrong.`

`And then you won't know what to do. Will you?`

`<>`

`No, didn't think so.`

 

**1 m /3 w /4 d/ 6 h**

Stan walks into the kitchen to find his great niece and nephew already inside, one using the blender, the other poring over some doorstopper called  _Mystic Rituals and Their Space Time Applications_. He sits down at the table; it’d be no use trying to escape at this point.

“Sweetie, you know I really appreciate it when you do this,” he says as gently as his gruff voice will allow, “but I don’t think I can stomach any more Mabel Juice. You guys should enjoy being able to eat whatever you want while you can.”

“It’s not Mabel Juice, Grunkle Stan, it’s virgin Drink of the Dead,” Mabel informs him.

He squints. “Virgin? What.”

She sighs as she pours something the consistency of maple syrup into a thermos. “Yeah, I don’t have any ‘the blood of your enemies’ to put in it. This is the best you can do when you’re friends with absolutely everyone.”

She promptly places it in front of her brother. “Also it’s just for this nerd, since he thinks he’s a ghost.”

Dipper doesn’t react; he’s learned his lesson by now.

“What’s it supposed to do, get him to grow muscles?”

“Grunkle Stan, haven’t you noticed anything different about Dipper lately?” Mabel prompts as she pours herself a bowl of Cheerios in chocolate milk.

“No, but I have noticed something different about the TV. Dipper, there’s rats chewing the wires, go fix it.”

“Now?”

“I’m not getting any younger.”

Dipper exits the kitchen.

There is a low, creaky growl, the sort Big Monsters in adventure films use to build suspense before they appear, followed by terrified squeaks.

Dipper reenters the kitchen and sits at the table.

“Uh. What was that?” Stan hazards, digging a finger in his ear to check for wax.

“It’s all in the spooky drink, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel says with obvious pride. Dipper glances at the untouched thermos before going back to his book without a word.

“Well then kids, I got just the attraction for you.”

 ...

“Break time!” Mabel announces, squeezing an airhorn.

Dipper takes off the fake wolf ears of his costume and accepts the baggie she offers filled with apple slices and a sandwich.

She takes a seat next to him. “We got about ten minutes til the next tourists come in, you wanna proofread my letter to the complaints department?”

“Mabel he’s just gonna throw it in the trash.” Dipper takes a bite of his sandwich and makes a face. He removes his false fangs and tries again with more success. Mabel frowns, wadding up the paper to throw at her great uncle’s head later.

“Eh. It’s not really that bad, I’ve worn way dumber outfits than this.” He can’t quite place what they were, what they looked like, and on what specific occasion he wore them, but he is nonetheless convinced they were humiliating enough to have burnt out his shame circuits for at least another 50 years.

“Well… maybe we could take turns? I take this and you take pickpocketing duty. You just gotta show me how to do the thing,” Mabel says, baring her teeth and raising her fingers like claws. The braces impact the effect somewhat, but the long artificial nails she’s wearing help.

Dipper hesitates. On one hand he’d rather they weren’t both subjected to this. On the other, he has a feeling Mabel will make a poor decision trying to get back at Stan otherwise.

“Alright. So, there’s not a lot to it. Just sort of build up the phlegm in the back of your throat right and then…”


	3. Transience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Transience** \- Decreasing accessibility of memory over time.

_"I carry a log, yes. Is it funny to you? It is not to me. Behind all things are reasons. Reasons can even explain the absurd."_

\-  The Log Lady

***

 **2** **m/ 1 w/ 1 d/ 17 h**

“Mabel!”

She wakes with a start, her brother ducking low to avoid the haymaker she throws for his face. “You realtors’ll have to pry these puppies from my cold, dead hands — !”

“Mabel, Mabel, it’s okay!” Dipper hisses urgently, palms up in a placating gesture. He glances nervously downward in the general direction of the living room. Hopefully the outburst wouldn’t wake Stan.

Fists still held at the ready, Mabel blinks, eyes finally focusing. “Oh. Ohhhhh, that makes more sense,” she mutters, slowly dropping her guard.

“You weren’t paying attention when we were going over the agenda for tonight, were you?" Dipper says, crossing his arms as she slides off the bed. "We're not going to be going to sleep for a while."

“I was paying attention all right, did you see that Henry cut his hair? I think it looked cuter long, but don't tell him I said so.” Mabel yawns. “Is it really time already? I was trying to pack a few Z's into my brain suitcase for the road.”

“Yeah, Stan's asleep. I hid the remote so all he had to watch was that movie about migrating penguins, it didn't take too long.” Not that it was necessary; this iteration of Stan seemed to have a slightly more hands off approach to being their caretaker than he remembers. Dipper thinks that observation's probably on him; the more he calls on his memories of childhood for reference, the more the summers seem to run together.

“Think you can quickly make me some cliffnotes outta that dissertation you read us?”

“Only if you promise not to interrupt."

“I’m pretty sure I basically never do that.”

Dipper holds out her backpack for her and they start off down the stairs and out through backdoor, stopping only to pick up an armload of unmarked bottles Dipper hid beneath the porch earlier. Safely on the deer trail and out of range of the Shack, he clears his throat. “As you know, several of our theories hinge on an event I like to call the Expulsion —"

“About that, aren’t you supposed to be too old to be in school?”

“Now,” he continues, pointedly ignoring her, “despite the fact the percepshroom exhibited no magical properties when applied to our test subject —”

“You can just say Wobbles, no one’s listening in on us or anything.”

“We are proceeding under the... admittedly unsafe assumption that its appearance in this world is indeed indicative of non-negligible supernatural contamination from my world. This would suggest the phenomenon responsible for depositing me here remains active in the immediate vicinity and is leaking S.A. radiation along Gravity Falls’ numerous ley lines. As explained in the supplementary material —”

She swats his hand down as he reaches to unzip the pocket on his backpack that holds the "sub-theory" journal (smaller, but no less invaluable). “No! Cliffnotes only!”

He sighs. “Fine, whatever. Anyway, this opening is unlikely to be the deliberate work of humans on this side, due both to the complexity involved in the creation of such a portal and our current lack of appreciable evidence. The plan? Return to the last confirmed S.A. hotspot and likely ley line node, then perform the following ritual, which will, with any luck, lead us to the Expulsion site —”

“What are you gonna do if we find it?”

He pauses, taken off guard such that he has to consider whether he really heard what he thinks he did, and she slows up to wait for him.

“Huh?”

“Just…" She breaks away from the deer trail in a dash, building up a running start before stepping up and jumping over an old abandoned picnic table off to one side. "... hop through the thing?”

“Well yeah, that’s the plan. Your Dipper, provided a theory in which such an entity exists proves true, will likely be on the other side.”

“Will he be okay?" she asks, not sounding concerned in the slightest as she walks back to meet him and they head off once more. "Like from being in the netherworld so long and all.”

He rolls his eyes. “Not everybody in my reality is a ghost, Mabel, just me. Wait! I mean, not me either _—_ Oh, forget it. Anyway, he’ll be fine, I’m sure Willow will have been looking after him.”

“Who’s that?”

“My niece.”

“I need details. _Now_.”

“Oh noooo, you don’t need those. I’m making it all up, remember?”

 

**_.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--._ **

_Entering sets his phantom senses tingling as he is dissolved in a mist of golden butterflies and remade anew, his form morphing without his wanting it._ <he could override this <stop it from happening <but he won’t≫> _It’s a funny feeling, but not haha funny._ <ticklish is the word he <is looking for> <has forgotten>>

 _He summons up a full-length mirror, takes a moment to assess his appearance in it_ <something his younger self never willingly took the time to do <leading to such questions as "Have I always had those bags under my eyes?">> _. Gone are the three piece suit and top hat he is only just beginning to feel comfortable thinking of as his clothes. In their place are a familiar vest, t-shirt, and shorts combo along with…_

_Oh no._

_Instead of shiny black shoes, he has on a pair of red and black roller shoes decorated with flames. There would be words about this._

<he’s grateful though <for the continual reassurance that she still thinks of him as this <as the brother she knew≫>

<he isn’t disappointed to see that his eyes remain stubbornly black and gold <rather than the boring brown he remembers> ≪he knows by now> even she cannot seem to strip him of that>>

_He finds her sipping tea on a small, floating platform in the sky amidst a field of puffy cotton ball clouds bridged by far too many rainbows to make sense for the gorgeous, sunny weather. The band of sugar gliders that comprise her tea party’s guests quickly disperse as he alights opposite her at the tea table and proceeds to pour himself a cup._

_“Could you be any more obvious?” he sighs in the prepubescent voice he used to despise_ <she’s <fixed that too <for the moment>> <made speaking bearable again <as she makes so many things <with her mere presence≫>> _, pausing to take a drink_ <it tastes exactly as he imagines it will <peppermint and hot water>> <he doesn't like it <but he takes what he can get these days>> _. When he’s finished it, he sets the china aside and leans forward on his elbows, twining his fingers. “You only throw these silly parties when you’re hiding something from me and want to come off nonchalant.”_

_“Psssh, noooo,” she denies in that rushed, too-loud manner that only confirms his guess as she drops more sugar cubes into her tea one at a time. “Geez, you’re so paranoid.”_

_“Then why is the table shivering?” he asks with the same insufferable grin he got when he started counting down moves left until checkmate, tapping the surface gently with an unnaturally sharp fingernail_ <still only a fingernail <for now>> _. At his words, the already unsteady coffee table begins to rattle harder, shifting its pink rosette tablecloth out of its proper alignment. A ceramic teapot in the shape of an elephant hops across the surface with each convulsion until it finally drops off the edge of both table and platform, hurtling down into the unending blue abyss below._

_“Haha, that’s me all right! Always bringing totally unimportant inanimate objects to life,” she says, voice faltering, giving the table a gentle pat. Her tea is more sugar than liquid at this point._

_“Malnoia,” Dipper Pines intones, and everything in Mabel Pines’ dreamscape, from the unmanned skywriting aircraft decorating the endless sky with Mabel’s thoughts to the flocks of migrating balloon animals, freezes in place. The coffee table shifts its shape, bucking their teacups every which way as it transitions in awkward jerks to the form of a young ram, stumbling on its feet as it recovers from being forced out of its glamour. Only two of its twenty one eyes manage to meet Dipper’s own, which glow dully here in the brightness of Mabel’s inner sanctum._

_“Y-yes, master?”_

_“_ _Where is_ _Mortification?"_

_At the sound of its name, a sugar glider pressed against the back of Mabel’s chair also makes a stutter-stop transition to nightmarish sheep. It plods into plain view beside its fellow fugitive, head already bowed in acceptance of its fate._

_“You two… you know what’s coming, don’t you?” Dipper asks, atmospheric temperature quickly dropping to correspond with the ice in his tone._

_Both creatures dip their heads. Malnoia, still shuddering, shuts seven of its eyes. Dipper raises one hand and –_

_Mabel steps between the demon and his nightmares, arms thrown wide. “Nope, denied!”_

_Dipper has never thought of himself as a younger sibling, nor of Mabel as an older sibling despite how frequently she reminds him of the existing five minute technicality, but in opposing her now it strikes him just how much taller she’s grown in the past two years that he is forced to look up to her. He rises to her level, floating higher to eliminate the discrepancy_ <not much higher <she's still well below the average <her brother would have surpassed her in height by now had he lived <no fault of her medication <though their parents believe so <consequently she doesn't get refills over break <it's becoming a sore point with her>>>>>>> _._

_“Mabel…” he growls, but the momentary anger at being interrupted dissipates almost instantly. He takes a deep breath and when he speaks again his voice is firm, but there is little heat to it. “I wasn’t asking permission.”_

_“Nuh-uh, it’s not happening. This is my dream, and as long as you’re under my dream roof, you follow my dream rules. No harassing my dream guests. Dream comprede, dream dork?”_

_“Yeah, and I’m a dream demon, remember?” He summons to his hand a snow globe that appears to hold a miniaturized version of their current surroundings, complete with its own little Dipper holding his own little globe (inside of which there is probably yet another Dipper holding yet another globe, and so on). “The whole of the brainspace? My domain.”_

_His hand flexes and the trinket is crushed in his claws_ <<deliberately> <temporarily> in defiance of the constraints she has placed on his appearance> <so easily> _with the sharp sound of a firecracker, setting stray bits of glass tinkling and the stuff of dreams oozing through his clenched fingers. And then the mess is gone, wiped away down to the specks of phantasmagoria trapped under his nails_ <mere fingernails once again> _, and he is pointing at the creatures cowering behind her. “Nightmares? Also mine.”_

_“Dream demon,” she snorts in the wake of his display, unmoved. “What does that even make you really, the Lord of Putting People to Sleep? I could see it, the way you go on and on and —"_

_“Look,” Dipper says, stalwartly refusing to allow her repeated introductions of levity to derail his train of thought. He would have his tirade and it would be taken seriously, damn it. “This is a matter that practically doesn’t even concern you —”_

_“I am_ so _concerned! How long are you planning on pushing the poor things away, huh?” Mabel asks, frowning petulantly and throwing a thumb over her shoulder at the quivering sheep._

_“I was thinking for̨e̸v̡er," Dipper snarls loud enough for them to know he means them to listen, secretly delighting in the way they visibly quail. He tuts. “Hiding behind my sister like a shield, that’s a new low.”_

_A bucket of ice water appears in the air and upends itself over his head. “Cut that out, you’re scaring them," Mabel scolds._

_“They should be scared!” he snaps irritably, summoning a towel and running it furiously over his hair. He's a demon, not a dog. “I explicitly ordered them not to bother us.”_

_“I know, so_ I _bothered_ them _! You've got nothin’ on ‘em, copper." A pair of halos inexplicably pop into being above the nightmares' heads. Mortification makes the mistake of trying to look up at them and gets its halo stuck in its gnarled horns._

_“Oh-oh perfect," Dipper says, tossing the soaked towel carelessly off the platform, "so now I gotta worry about being countermanded? Some loyal underlings these guys have turned out to be.”_

_“Bro, come on, you haven't even given them a chance really." Mabel squats down between the nightmares, squeezing them close to her with both arms as their eyes balloon from the pressure. Dipper can practically hear an emotional ballad building_ <"For just eighteen dollars a day..."> _. "They just wanna be your weird, cuddly monster lackeys. You tell ‘em one nice thing, give ‘em one li’l errand to run, and it makes their entire flippin’ day, it’s adorable!”_

_“I’m having a perfectly good time becoming a demon all on my own, thanks.”_

_“That’s like, demonstrably untrue.”_

_“Why do you —” he nearly can’t finish, he shouldn’t have to say this, it should be_ obvious _, but it's clear she isn't going to stop unless he cuts straight to the heart of it. “Why do you trust them, huh? How are you okay with letting them in here, after what they did?” He hadn’t intended it, hadn’t noticed until the words were out, but by the time he’s finished, he’s dead serious, he’s shouting, he’s_ livid _, clenched fists shaking. (Now where the fuck did that come from?)_

_At first, she lets his words hang there in the air, unanswered. Lets him think about what he’s said. Lets him regret it. Then,_

_“You’ve talked to them, haven’t you? Yeah... yeah, you must’ve,” she answers herself quietly, the carefree attitude tucked away for now. “What they did… listen, I’m sure they didn’t mean to hurt anyone! I mean, as keen as they are on this 'doing your bidding' junk..." She shakes her head. "Had to've been a mistake.”_

[ _“It’s as much my fault as yours, all right? Look, it was my stupid idea to go giving that music an outlet when we both totally knew it was gonna be bad news somehow.”_

 _He says nothing. She doesn't understand. He isn’t sure if he wants her to understand. This wasn’t like the more innocuous incidents before; he hadn’t lost time_ <more like time lost him <space too> <so unreliable>>  _or simply been disoriented by the flow of the universe through him. His mind had been crystal clear, something else entirely had to have been affected. He knows this because he’d known then. He’d known as the spell came to its climax that the targets were going to be their parents, had known who it was lying there, bodies wracked by spasms, minds consumed by fear. And he'd done nothing._

_Because          somehow                    despite that                                        at the time_

_it was…_

_well, it was as if…_

_they'd meant nothing to him._ ]

_“How do you know? That I- that they didn’t mean any harm, I mean.”_

_She rolls her eyes. “They told me, duh.”_

_“Convenient,” he grumbles, glaring past her again. “We can’t know for sure. I’d rather not risk it.”_

_“We can’t know_ anything _for sure!”_

_He begs to differ, but says nothing._

_“Well, if you won’t take a chance on them, maybe… you can take a chance on me!” she suddenly singsongs, lunging forward to grab his hands in his moment of confusion and whirling him around as her inner soundtrack suddenly blares BABBA._

_“Whoa, hey, not fair, using this against me," Dipper says, putting up a struggle, but he is smiling._

_"It works, doesn't it? All's fair in love and psychological warfare!" she replies, continuing to brighten up._

_"Okay, okay," he says, trying to dig his heels into the platform and stop this nonsense. Unfortunately, this action starts him rolling_ <he's forgotten the shoes> _and he slips and falls off the edge, taking Mabel down with him. They hurtle down through the fathomless blue a while, past a handful of still-frozen balloon denizens, both of them screaming, less out of fear at this point in their lives than out of habit._

_Then, just as suddenly, they stop, each of them landing on something large and soft and eager to give way beneath them. Voices from somewhere below float up to them._

_"We're sorry, master, we know it is a dream..." Malnoia begins, hesitantly._

_"... But it looked as if you'd forgotten to levitate." Mortification concludes, carefully._

_Mabel and Dipper sit up, hands curled in soft wool, and look down at the two nightmares, who've inflated themselves to the size of cars in order to catch them. Then they look at each other. Mabel, expectant. Dipper, exhausted._

_Dipper breathes out, collapsing back against Mortification's soft fur. "All right, all right. Let's call it... a probationary period."_

_Mabel falls back herself with that unique mix of squealing and laughter that never failed not to spare his ears._

_..._

 

`Oh boy, there it is again, gag reflex. I don't think I like doing these ones. It feels weird. Like petting a fish weird.`

`<then stop>`

`No way, Jose.`

 

_A voice in the darkness. That's new. He's never heard a voice here before. Not even his own._

What? _he asks, surprising himself. He's never managed to speak before either. He feels too tired right now to deal with all this newness. Not physically so; he hasn't been able to manifest since..._

_Mentally worn out. There's a nightmare with them in their room right now. He isn't sure why, but it always feels draining having them around. But no matter how heavy the illusion that passes for his body feels, he can't sleep. This place is as close as he ever gets._

I'm sorry, master _, the voice says,_ but I don't understand what it is she wants from me.

_He opens his eyes, and immediately realizes these eyes are not his. For one thing, they feel too far apart. Woah, he can see practically everything in the room like this._

_Then something directly in front that he could not see moves and Mabel is there, seeming much bigger somehow, her face inches from his own (but not his?_ <their> _). "Who's a good nightmare? Who is it? Whoooooo is it?"_

She keeps saying that.

_Dipper smirks and he knows that it's his mouth doing that, but the movement feels farther away somehow, more like wiggling a toe._

Hold on, I got this.

_He wags their ropy, sparsely feathered tail to the best of their ability and bleats, "It's me."_

_Mabel practically screams with delight, picking them up in her arms, one hand supporting them and one on their back, and they shrink themself to fit more easily. "Ohhhhmigosh, you're so CUTE!" she shrills as she spins them around and they try not to be sick. "The second cutest in the world, I CAN'T STAND IT! I just wanna eat you up!"_

_Jagged blades of glass begin to grow from their skin and up through their fur in readiness, but he holds them back._

She isn't going to hurt you.

But master -

Just relax.

_And, just like that, they do. Powerful muscles that had begun to bunch loosen as the blades retreat back beneath their skin. Mabel pats their head and they lean it into her shoulder._

_"Oh hey, your eyes do that freaky thing, too." Mabel turns them to face himself, lying suspended above the rafter near the ceiling. His head is cushioned on his folded arms, eyes open and glowing faintly but lidded, seeing nothing. "Dipper! Dipper, you're gonna miss it, look what Phrenesis is doing! Dipper!"_

_Mabel leans backward and the hand petting them disappears. A moment later, a pillow flies up for his face and passes harmlessly through him. He doesn't even blink._

_"Ugh, he's impossible when he's like this," she groans, letting them down. She crosses her arms with a huff. "You'd think it'd be the perfect opportunity to draw on his face or make him wear a silly hat and take blackmail pics or something, but nothing can touch him, it isn't fair!"_

_She drops more than she sits back down, leaning back against her bed. When she beckons them with a finger, they trot over and kneel down to lie across her lap. She sighs as she strokes the puffy ring of wool about their neck. "It sucks, Phren. He's been all see-through like forever. I mean, it's not such a big problem now that we're back in Gravity Falls, 'cause all our friends are here and everyone's cool with it! But I miss being able to mess with him, you know? And no matter how lucky he is to have somebody as great at this as me, he's probably getting tired of using me as a telephone all the time. I think that's why he's spacing out more, 'cause he's bored."_

_Phrenesis lifts their head. "There is one way —"_

Don't.

_Her puzzled face looms over them. "What, what is it?"_

_They flick their ears, turning their head away. "Oh, I shouldn't have said that, I'm sorry."_

_"No, come on, if you got somethin', spill it!"_

Tell her and I swear I will eat you, psychological consequences be damned.

_Silence as they struggle to resolve conflicting commands. Then,_

_"He called it Experiment 3."_

 

****2** **m/ 1 w/ 1 d/ 18 h****

When they arrive, the majority of the fallen tree has already been cut into several neat, twenty-four inch rounds that lie in a loose collection near the middle of the clearing. Henry, wearing that same sweater as always no matter the heat or the ribbing he's getting from his cousin, is sitting atop one, carving a small block of wood with a pocket knife. Dipper can make out the beginnings of ears and a tail.

“Woah. Aitch, you did all this yourself?” Mabel asks, eyes shining as she shrugs off her backpack.

Henry shakes his head, eyes still on his carving. “I told Wendy this’d be a good way to break in the 357 XP.”

“Oh, you guys didn’t have to go and do all that,” Dipper says, a slight hint of guilt in his tone as he sets down the bottles, freeing his hands.

Henry lowers the carving and pinches the bridge of his nose. Dipper can practically hear him counting. When he does speak, his tone is even and his words deliberate.

“Dipper. You were going to use that axe.” A nod to the worn tool resting against a nearby tree, axehead chipped.

“To buck this tree.” Henry taps the large section of trunk he sits atop with the back of a steel-toed boot. Dipper wouldn’t be able to fully wrap his arms around its girth.

“In the dark,” Henry finishes, somewhat unnecessarily.

“In my defense, I’m still being reintroduced to the concept of physical limitations.”

Henry sighs and sets down the carving. He gets to his feet, thumbs in the pockets of his faded blue jeans. “So? I brought the axe. What’s the 'super special' reward?”

“Only a kiss from the FAIREST maiden in the land!” Mabel shouts, launching herself at him. Henry’s too surprised to dodge and the two of them fall to the ground in an awkward heap. Dipper picks up the axe, weighs it in his hands, and gives it a few test swings. “All right. Well, have fun you two, I think I can handle the rest.”

As they wait for sundown, Henry and Mabel work together to roll a pair of old logs into the clearing to serve as benches while Dipper splits rounds, murmuring a spell. Henry offers his help every few minutes or so, but Dipper continues to refuse it, assuring him he’s done enough. Never mind that completing the task without assistance is also swiftly becoming a matter of personal pride; Dipper seriously cannot believe his past self could have been this weak and ineffectual. He's barely started on his third round and his traitorous arms are already shaking, sweaty palms loosening his grip on the handle so as to force him to wipe them on his shorts frequently.

"These loggers don't talk like most people you find," he continues, struggling to recall the words he's memorized as he wipes the sweat beginning to come down his forehead. "You'd swear they're from some foreign land."

He doesn't expect the spirits of those whose history suffuses the woods of this town to literally appear as they might have were he to draw upon it for his magic before. Where the Transcendence had blown open the gateway to a power that breathed a strange life into the tallest of tales and the minutia alike, it was clear the door to this world remained stubbornly shut. But he isn't opposed to the work of coaxing that magic out through the gap beneath.

"It was never the hard work that I couldn't take, it's their language I don't understand."

 _"Quit that singin', boy, 'less you in a hurry a lose a foot,"_  he imagines an echoing, baritone voice would be chiding him right about now, sending shivers through the roots of the surrounding trees. Dipper had thought the words might grant him the strength to carry out this task if nothing else, but it feels very nearly the opposite, as though every verse he utters saps him of vigor. Still. Something has to be working, something has to be responding to him. He's sure of it.

_"This is men's work, son. You got no business messin' round with that woodsman's axe. Go home."_

The axe gets stuck and Dipper struggles to pull it from the wood. Henry calls out to him something he doesn't catch as lost to the world as he is, as demanding of his concentration as this menial task has become. Probably the same question he's asked three times already, he thinks, so he gives the redhead the same answer as before.

“Besides," he explains to Henry (again) through gritted teeth, bringing the blade down (again) and (again) failing to properly line up the strike, "it’s something I really oughta do myself, y'see. This is gonna be less of an offering in and of itself so much as it is a reminder of sacrifices past. A way to claim what I’m already owed, if you will.”

“It’s sounding more and more like I’ve been kidnapped by a cult.”

Mabel leans against Henry, batting her eyelashes. “Romantic, isn’t it?”

"Oh. Um," a blushing Henry manages, before returning to the topic that doesn't get him choked up. "And-and Dipper? You know it isn't necessary to split those vertically, right? Unless your ritual thing requires a lot of unnecessary effort or something, I guess I wouldn't really know..."

Dipper freezes in place, mid-swing.

Then,

_"Son of a—!"_

...

“The eye is opening,” Dipper recites as solemnly as he can manage laid out along a log, staring up at the rising moon, still yet to quite reach its optimal position. Knowing he'll have to get back up in a minute, he takes a deep breath, trying to savor the night air. Even cut off from his other senses as he is, he thinks he can feel it, the tiniest rush, maybe just the lingering adrenaline, runner's high perhaps, but maybe, just maybe, something more. Then, “Guess that’s the final strike against any manner of clandestine reconnaissance. If a vague, yet menacing government agency wanted to stop us, they could have just had it rain tonight or something, that’d’ve ruined the whole thing.”

“What do you mean?” Henry asks from the opposite log where Mabel has been teaching him how to play Cat's Cradle ("And this is the witch's broom! Which is kinda an overrated form of witch transportation by the by. I mean, sure, cats can balance on that thing no problem, but despite what the ad campaign would have you believe, it definitely does _not_ work for pigs.").

“Dipper takes this game pretty seriously.”

"Or! Maybe they expected I would come to that conclusion?" Dipper continues, paying no mind to the comments of his co-conspirators. "Hmm, tricky."

Discarding the possibility as unlikely, Dipper takes a seat on the unsplit round where Henry sat earlier, borrowing a pen from Mabel’s backpack (which is always full of all manner of drawing utensils at any given time) to draw symbols on a few of the blocks of wood by the light of their lantern. Then he takes out from his right pocket the linerlock he swiped from Stan’s fishing gear earlier and sets about cutting into the blocks along the lines.

"Strong winds and widowmakers, they don't bother us at all. We don't care what the weather's like, if it's winter, spring, or fall —"

"You know, doing magic sounds like more work than I thought it'd be." Dipper looks up to see Mabel frowning across from him, head in hands.

"Probably just seems that way because it's me doing it," he tells her, welcoming a break. He's slowly but surely running out of Buzz Martin.

"Wha?"

"Yeah. Intuitive spellcasting is more your racket. I sort of get carried away overthinking the design and, well." The apologetic gesture he makes encompasses the mess they've made of the clearing. Were it Mabel in his situation, she'd probably have gone with the rhabdomancy approach and been done with it (as much as he used to complain about its imprecision, it _had_  always worked well for her somehow). "I sort of... let's say, lucked out with the whole demonic instinct thing. I don't think you'd have had the patience to deal with me pulling this kind of thing all the time."

"See, Dipper, when you say things like that," Henry throws out, "it sounds almost like you think demons and magic and that stuff is for real."

Dipper lowers his eyes to the block he's carving as it dawns on him he's made an error; that he can trust this Henry doesn't mean he's the same Henry, the one who understands. He imagines all manner of embarrassing stories Mabel will surely launch into now, having been given just the right set up. With so many options, he wonders what she'll choose this time. 

'Oh Henry, you don't know the half of it! One time, I told Dipper I saw a UFO hovering above our school's blacktop out the window during math class and for the next two weeks instead of playing at recess he would just lie there waiting for a craft to show up and take him away. We got him to wear some pretty stupid outfits telling him they'd be more likely to attract the aliens' attention.' Always a classic, that one.

'Yeah, my brother's pretty crazy all right! One time, Dipper set up these mousetraps with those chocolate gold coins instead of cheese, trying to catch a leprechaun, and I got caught in one trying to sneak some and then he tied me to a chair because he thought the leprechaun had shapeshifted to look like me. That interrogation lasted like three hours and he only let me go 'cause mom made us break for dinner.' She hadn't told that one in a while, it could do with some dusting off.

What he doesn't imagine is what actually follows...

Mabel shoots Dipper a knowing glance before saying, "Well yeah, we gotta stay in character or it's no fun."

... Her coming to his rescue.

 

`<<if you do not stop> he is going to kill you>`

`So let's see, that's pain, failure, and now death. What kind of threat you gonna hit me with next, retroactive non-existence? ` `You're out of ammo there, cowboy. Pew, pew.`

`<a promise <not a threat>>`

`Well you're a little late on the draw. I've known this guy would be the death of me for a looooooong time now, that's not news.`

 

"Oh, um, yeah, you're right," Henry says, and a pang of sympathy hits Dipper with the reminder that Henry had had even less informal interaction with kids his own age at this point than Dipper had. He probably didn't know how you were supposed to carry out a game of pretend, how much of a commitment to the fiction he could be expected to make. "What's my character like again?"

"Whatever you think a knight-type should be, go banana nuts," Mabel says with a shrug. Henry seems to think about this a moment before getting up to retrieve the axe from the woodpile.

"Anyway," Mabel says, addressing Dipper again, leaning her elbows on her knees, "I get you don't want help with the wood carving stuff 'cause you gotta finish proving yourself to some dumb ol' lumberjack forest spirits that may or may not exist, but maybe we could help carry the tune at least? I mean, you were playing those tapes in the house all day, it kinda got stuck in my head, so I know the words and everything."

"Uh, sure thing," he says, nodding and trying to hide his astonishment. "I'll start: We don't complain if the timber's small, or if the ground is steep."

"Hard work don't scare us, we can lay right down beside it and go to sleep!" she finishes, smiling.

Even Henry gets into it once he sits back down, axe in hand. It seems to Dipper between the three of them, carving the rest of the blocks doesn't take long at all.

...

Somewhere between the sixth and seventh blocks, Dipper has a juvenile thought. He makes a half-hearted attempt to stifle it before amusement gets the better of him.

“Hey. Hey, Henry.”

“Yes?”

Dipper pauses to point toward the night sky, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “The moon.”

“Er… yeah, I suppose it is,” Henry says, which is the precise moment Dipper loses it, laughing like a hyena on nitrous oxide, so hard he very nearly drops the knife.

Henry’s eyebrows bunch. “Did I say something?”

“Nah, he just kinda does that lately,” Mabel says informatively.

“I’m-I’m sorry,” Dipper manages between the convulsions wracking his frame, bending over, clutching at his sides. “You wouldn’t- you wouldn’t remember! But I couldn’t- I couldn't help myself-AHAHAHA!” Henry stops trying to talk to him after the third try, as the attempts only make Dipper laugh that much harder, squeezing his eyes shut, tears running down his face.

After fifteen minutes, when the spontaneous giggle-fits have finally died away (primarily because he has utterly run out of breath and started laughing silently), Dipper starts stacking the blocks of wood into a pile about his own height. When it has finally reached stability such that it is no longer constantly shedding blocks of wood and forcing him to start over, Dipper places one of the blocks inscribed with a symbol at the top along with a wallet size copy of his middle school photo. He then screws off the top of an unmarked bottle and nods to Mabel. She responds with a clumsy left-handed salute and starts spacing out the remaining carvings in a rough circle about the pile.

“Remember to leave an empty space between the fez and star,” Dipper reminds her.

“Loud and clear, boss bro-twin.”

“So... how's this meant to work?” Henry asks. Dipper gets the feeling he’s been weighing the possible drawbacks against the possible gains of doing so for a while now.

“This is a pretty simple divination spell in theory, the mystical equivalent of ‘Yo, which way to the nearest anomalous phenomenon?’,” Dipper explains as he thoroughly coats the wooden structure with strong-smelling liquid from the bottles. “For increased efficacy, it doesn’t demand anything of the medium that it isn’t already willing to do. It only has two choices of response: to burn or not to burn.” Discarding the empty bottles, he sprinkles on two handfuls of bay leaves (“Are these magic herbs for the spell? If I eat one, will I be able to turn into a fish person or something?” (“No, honestly I just like the smell.”)).

Dipper strikes a match (Mabel had gotten Stan’s approval to purchase a 10-pack of safety matches (“But Grunkle Stan, how could they be dangerous when they have the word ‘safety’ written on them right there?”)), grinning with the manic jollity of a pyromaniac on the Fourth of July. “And now, hopefully without further death or delay, the moment we’ve all been waiting for! You kids might want to stand back.”

Henry takes a careful step toward him, holding out a hand. “Hey, uh... 'in theory', you said... you’ve done this spell thing before, right?”

Dipper grins wider, giving a slight shake of his head. “No sir, spent the past few weeks crafting it myself!”

“Okay, well you really don’t want to be so close to that thing when you light it, not with that much lighter fluid on,” Henry cautions. “Trust me, grown adults in my family, who’ve lit much larger bonfires, with gasoline, _for fun_ , even they would take enough care to set it off from a distance.”

Dipper hums, pretending to reflect on Henry’s words even as his eyes reflect the bright, wavering light of the match. “After all the trouble we’ve gone through to give them a proper substitute, it’d seem a little greedy of the powers that be to demand _two_ pine trees, don’t you think?”

Mabel takes Henry’s hand and pulls him back. “He’s stopped making sense, that’s the cue to back off.”

"Lycifu po wcmthf," Dipper recites, one hand in his left pocket. He flicks the match onto the wood pile and the world goes white.

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_“What’s my name?”_

_“ONE! SHOT!” Four voices answer (plus a fifth (known only to her (as usual))). Mabel launches the bowling ball enthusiastically down the rickety plywood lane to swerve tightly toward the objects gathered at the opposite end, frictional rumble swiftly building with the onlookers’ anticipation. With a sharp report reminiscent of a starting pistol, nine bobbleheads shaped like her great uncle scatter in various directions across the Shack’s backyard. One of them, impossibly, soars high enough to break the attic window._

_“Whaaaaat, seriously?” Mabel whines, eyeing the last bobblehead standing, then glaring down at her bowling shoes. “I think that guy conned_ you _, Dipper. One hundred percent strike rate, my foot!”_

_Dipper flits over for a closer look at the destruction she’s wrought, more teleportation than motion at this stage in his demonic maturation process. “Hmm. Maybe we have to use actual pins? I’m not sure how concerned the mystical forces are with authenticity.”_

_“We must not have yelled loud enough,” Candy says, adjusting her glasses._

_“Stuff does more damage the louder you are, FACT,” Grenda agrees, punching a fist into her palm as if challenging anyone who might disagree to have her demonstrate this important principle for them._

_“Nah dood, my cousin showed me the trick to this game. I guess he’s like, some kinda wizard now? Anyway, he says whatcha gotta do, is cast your spirit into the ball as you throw, while commanding it to destroy your enemies. The enemies bein' those pins there,” Soos explains, miming the proper technique. After a pause, he adds, “Also, you miiiight wanna have a fire extinguisher nearby if you try that. You know, in case the ball decides to go like a bomb and like, EXPLODE heheh.”_

_“That’s a good idea,” Mabel commends him as she sets up the bobbleheads again_ <Tyler’s rule: “You hit ‘em, you get ‘em”> _._

_“Could be the shoes only work for you, Dipper,” Wendy suggests, arms folded behind her head, facing Mabel’s general direction since that was where her demon brother allegedly could be found most of the time. “The guy did give ‘em to you, right?”_

[ _It t_ _akes the demon sitting cross-legged in midair above the magic circle nearly a minute to realize why his startled summoner hasn't spoken a single word._

_"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry, it's just I've sort of been looking forward to this for a while," Dipper apologizes, fighting to dial back his excitement, and the glow of his eyes subsides somewhat. The woman drops to her knees like a bag of hammers, heaving deep breaths. He waits patiently for her to finish, leaning forward to get a better look at her._

_Brown hair pulled back, black tee, cargo pants with lots of extra pockets._ _No shoes. Mabel would approve of the sparkliness of her toenail polish. Dipper approves of the practicality of the rune designs stamped onto it._

_"What-what kind of demon are you?" she gasps as she gets to her feet._

_He snickers. "What, you called for me and you don't know? That's highly irresponsible, man, people could, you know, die."_

_"I-I didn't call you."_

_"No?" He looks down to inspect the circle._

_Chalk; a novice or an alchemist._

_The added array of astrological symbols drawn neatly about the perimeter are a nice touch; even if he did draw on the Great Bear for assistance, he probably wouldn't be able to take all twelve of them himself. Not a novice, then._

_He sniffs. The basement's cramped and bare, nothing but concrete and pipes with a washer and dryer pushed into a narrow corner as if modern technological wonders had no business sharing space with rituals old as time itself. And yet so many lingering scents; formaldehyde, seawater, old books, graveyard dirt, potting soil and herbs (animal dander too, ugh, there's a cat in this house). She'd been keeping ingredients down here and moved them elsewhere to make space. Definitely an alchemist, then._

_But most importantly, the base of the circle itself, which consists of ten idiosyncratic symbols surrounding the likeness of a being he'd never wanted to see again._

_"Well that's too bad," Dipper says smoothly, carefully bottling up that spark of anger for later and returning his attention to the woman. He still has a job to do, and he isn't going to let bad memories ruin his chance at finally seeing some action. "No point calling that one, see, I actually sort of killed that guy.”_

_The way the blood drains from her face shouldn't look so comical. "You did?”_

_“Mmhmm," he hums proudly. "Wish I'd gotten some notification from the universe I'd be stuck fielding his calls, probably gonna have to file a complaint. But uh, as for you! I can help you right now, if you like. Me and him have got similar areas of expertise."_

_His unexpected appearance may have put her off balance, but at this, the woman straightens up, squaring her shoulders. He has a feeling she's practiced whatever she's about to say. "My name is Logan, and what I seek is revenge."_

_"Logan," he pronounces carefully, but the name tastes stale on his tongue. Not her real one. He can respect that. "You're speaking my language."_

_She produces a photo from her pocket and holds it up for him to see. It is of a tiny, middle-aged woman with thick goggle-glasses sitting in a rocking chair on a sunny afternoon. Dipper squints at it. "This is your nemesis? She doesn't look very menacing."_

_Logan reaches up with the other hand and pulls up the chain around her neck, revealing from beneath the collar of her t-shirt an amber amulet with a black slit down the middle like a cat's eye. "Not many people know what this is, but I bet you do."_

<sign of the werecat>

_"My brother's got one, too. Transcendence did funny things to people."_

<he can certainly relate>

_"This lady, Jenn? Says she doesn't feel safe anymore with magical creatures living in her backyard, doesn't sit right. She's suspected the two of us for a while now; we run a shop together upstairs with our alchemy. Magic's a perk of the new status, you know. Anyway, two days ago she caught him in one of these traps she's always setting up; seems she's moved up from gnomes and pixies. When she opened it he clawed at her to get away, but before he did she managed to pull off his amulet. Without it, he's just an ordinary lazy house cat. He's not fully conscious in there without it. She's waiting for me to confront her, I know. Keeps coming by the shop to ask how my brother's gettin' on and when he'll be back."_

_"Why involve me?" he says without dismissal, merely curious._

_"We can't exactly go to the police without explaining what the amulet looks like or, if we want to stress that it's an emergency, why it is I need it back. There's a risk we could be found out. That's what she wants, you know, I'm sure she's ready to give them a story. I don't mind telling close friends, but going public about our shapeshifting... there's all sorts of rumors floating around, nowadays. About troll blood restoring your strength. About mermaid's eggs granting the Sight. About... about werecat pelts being resistant against spells and curses."_

_"I understand," he says, and he means it. Mabel had earned her share of harassment back in Piedmont over accusations of being something or another. Though saying the circumstances of the move had impacted their relationship with their parents would be putting it lightly, it was nonetheless a relief to be back where no one minded his and Mabel's weirdness, supernatural or otherwise. "Let's hear the terms."_

_"I want to put a curse on Jenn. Say she starts growing fur. Maybe a tail in a few days. Ears too. A curse that'll only pass once she's given the amulet back. And if she doesn't? Well," Logan says, and there's venom in it, "be a shame if anyone were to report a werecat stalking them round here."_

_He's impressed. She knows not to simply ask for the amulet back. Not only would such a deal cost her more, the amulet being something incredibly precious and unique to her brother, but it wouldn't fix the problem of Jenn herself. No doubt Logan intends to tell her the curse will be back if she doesn't keep her mouth shut._

_"This I can do," Dipper says with a confidence in his abilities he doesn't truly possess, but years of living with Mabel have taught him that's enough. "And in return?"_

_"This." She takes out something wrapped in a velvet cloth and presents it. A gold timepiece with symbols in place of numerals. Dipper can see the hands currently point to a star and an ouroboros respectively._

_"I was trying to hail a cab once, late at night," she tells him. "It was miserable out, snow coming down hard. This little old woman walks up a bit later and she's trying to get one too. Taxi eventually pulls up to me. And by this point I can't even feel those arms I've been waving around and I'm thinking if I try to take a step I'll find out I've frozen to the spot. But I let her take it. It's just manners, you know? Anyway, I get home late, thaw, get into bed. And I find this underneath my pillow. No note. But I know."_

_"It's lovely," Dipper admits. "But listen, when a witch as powerful as that one grants you a gift, you keep it."_

_“I don't have much else I think you'd want," she confesses._

_"Oh, you do!" he assures her, crooked grin back in place. "Trust me. It's just that what you're asking me to do won't be worth anything you’re_ prepared _to give up.”_

_She's quiet for a time. Then, "Hey, d'ya mind if I run upstairs for a bit?"_

_"Go ahead, your spell will hold up for at least an hour."_

_"That's not really what I meant. Will you be all right just uh... sitting there?"_

_He shrugs. "Take your time. I don't have anything better to do today."_

_She starts up the creaky wooden stairs, then leans over the railing. "Hey, so. You want anything? Tea?"_

_"Tea sounds good."_

_..._

_When Logan finally comes back down, carrying a shoebox under one arm and a cup of tea in hand, he's sprawled on his back reading_ David Dies at the End <"It's perfect, Mabel. Victoria <"Don't be such a drama queen, Victoria."> can't ruin it for me if there are spoilers already in the title!"> _. The sound of stairs creaking raises his head and he banishes the book in a flash of blue flame._

 _She holds out the cup for him and he reaches forward to take it only for his fingers to hit an invisible barrier_ <a snorting bull goring him on its horns> _. He pulls his slightly smoking digits back with a soft hiss, glaring down at the Taurus symbol that lay between the two of them._

_"Oh. Nearly forgot about that."_

_"All right," Dipper says, licking his dry lips. "Deal first, then tea."_

_She sets the cup down and removes the lid from the shoebox, revealing a crumpled pair of bowling shoes, light brown with bulges in the sides where bunions had once pushed at the leather. "These were my lucky pair, yeah? Wore 'em for maybe thirteen years. I haven't played any in the last few years though, not since... well, it's just, bowling was a thing I used to do with my Dad, you know, and... " Logan manages to tear her eyes from the shoes and look at him,_ _but in the process seems to remember what manner of creature he is._

_"Well, anyway, would these cover it?"_

<sufficient>

_"Yes."_

_"All right," she says, closing the box up again. "In exchange for these shoes I have here, the curse on Jenn as detailed, though by all means get creative with the specifics. Also, when I break this binding circle, no harm comes to me, my house, my belongings, or any loved ones of mine, et cetera as a result of that action."_

_"Deal."_

_Clasped hands. Fire. Chamomile._

_Went rather well for his first time, he thinks._

_"Oh hey, before I go." Dipper summons up a small notepad and a blue ballpoint pen, which he begins clicking rapidly. "Would you mind completing a short survey for me? It should improve the quality of future summons. Please be aware that your personal information such as name, date of birth, date of death, and MP address will not be recorded or otherwise linked with your responses."_

_"Um. All right."_

_"Question One: What horrifying vision of the past were you granted staring me in the eyes earlier and, on a scale from negative ten to ten, how likely is this content to figure prominently in your ensuing nightmares for a period not exceeding two weeks?"_

_"What would a negative number mean?"_

_"The content is more likely to recur in waking phenomena including but not limited to: daymares, hallucinations, and glamour rebound."_

_"Um. I saw the Transcendence again, specifically the part where I was sheltering from the blood rain beneath a bench and heard the hedge hounds baying. Maybe a four?"_

_Scribbling._

_"Question Two: How might your summoning experience today have been improved?"_

_"It isn't a big problem because she lives five houses down, but it would have been nice to be able to see Jenn's face when she realizes, maybe get a picture to use as blackmail."_

_Scribbling._

_Before the last of the Knowledge from the deal can drain from him, Dipper pulls a photo out of thin air with a label at the bottom simply reading "Jenn" and offers it to Logan with a lazy flick of the wrist. It moves, displaying a loop of her nemesis_ <five days from now> _running in circles in her own living room, chasing a long, furry purple tail that doesn't seem to want to stay stuffed and hidden beneath any of her clothes._

_"For the tea," he says simply._

_"Thank you."_

_"Question Three: Would you consider my current visage to be suitably demonic and impressive, on a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree?"_

_"Honestly?"_

_"Constructive criticism is very important, Logan."_

_"Gonna have to go with qualified disagreement."_

_"Care to elaborate how qualified?"_

_"Well... I wasn't exactly bowled over, but... something about..."_

<she called for a monster> <she still isn't sure what she got>

<the manner of speech> <the normalcy <no big bad beast> <no sinister silent spirit> <no wicked writhing mass of <organs> <teeth> <hair> <wax> <assorted mouths and pseudopodia> <thoughtless> <bloody> <alien>>

<just this <an odd kid playing dress up>>> <so obviously human>

<and yet the little things

<the eyes <an impossible color> <possessive of an unnerving intensity <even as they expressed emotions in a familiar fashion>>> <the voice <just high enough in pitch to sound artificially altered> <an underlying distortion like the buzz of an old television> <that slight ubiquitous edge of derision that made it difficult to gauge his level of sincerity>> <the too-wide smile <laughter worse <raucous and sharp <if short>>>>

<so obviously inhuman>>

<a boundary has been crossed here <a violation committed> but she can't find the word <the name for the <<to her> seemingly sourceless> yet persistent discomfort produced by this perceptual paradox>>

_"It's..."_

<wrong>

<everything broadcasting <wrong wrong wrong>>

 _He glances up from his scrawling_ <and the feeling <of being something small in the midst of the unfamiliar <that first time their aunt took them tubing on Lake Michigan when she was seven she was knocked off a few times <she used to float there in her life jacket <waiting for them to come back around for her> and imagine the monsters <big as those dinosaurs in her older brother's books <the human silhouettes beside them no taller than their toes>> circling beneath her in the deep dark water being roused to the surface by her kicking feet <she'd sworn something had brushed her leg>>>> intensifies with the eyes on her> _. He smiles, a friendly, patient, human smile,_ <another contradiction> _even as he takes it all in. There's just something about fear, he's come to realize since_ <that day> _he'd picked up the craving, that feels so much like respect. "Yes?"_

_"I-I mean, it's just. Um," Logan stalls as she struggles to recall what it is she'd meant to say, recovering from... whatever that was. "Since he isn't around to mind me saying, the one I meant to summon was a lot sillier-looking I thought. Probably more difficult to take seriously and that."_

_He'll take it._ ]

_“This is true,” Dipper says, although naturally Wendy can’t hear this response._

_"Or maybe Dipper just sucks at his job," a smiling Mabel says, punching him in the arm. "What? I'm just saying, that counts as a theory," she adds when he glares at her, crossing his arms. "Ha, sensitive."_

_"I'm_ amazing _at my job, you weren't there. Besides, I don't think she knew the shoes were magic. I could just tell right off the Transcendence did its thing on them."_

_“Maaaaan. Stupid magic rules, always sucking the fun out of everything,” Mabel complains before brightening again. “Ah well, this is more your game anyway. What d’ya say, bro, wanna take a crack at it?”_

_Wendy smiles. “Woah Dipper, you didn’t tell us you could play.”_

_“Yeah!” Mabel exclaims, cutting Dipper off before he can get a word out. She pulls on the hem of her sweater to clearly showcase the pair of pins crossed in an "X", followed by the words "Bowling Twins". “We’ve been working on a way around his whole disappearing act. You guys wanna see our new party trick?”_

_Wendy’s “Of course!”, Grenda’s “Would I!”, Candy’s “Yes, please”, and Soos’ “Yeah girl-dog, I wanna bowl with my main man” easily overpower Dipper’s lone “I don’t think that’s such a good idea”._

_“All right, be right back.” Mabel dashes off into the Shack. Her brother follows after, hanging low in the air._

_She keeps on power-walking, not needing to check behind her to know he’s there. “Before you say anything, I wanna remind you that you don’t get a choice here, you were outvoted. Besides, you need this. Being… how to put this… out of touch? For so long is seriously messing you up.”_

_He keeps pace as she turns a corner. “Mabel, we’ve tested this exactly once and I really don’t think -”_

_“For the love of cheese and chocolate, just spit out the real problem,” Mabel’s exasperated voice echoes out from inside the closet beneath the stairs_ <which had <since the near-calamity> become seemingly <though not actually> endless in floorspace> <Dipper has warned against keeping things in there <this advice has not been heeded by anyone <a common response to his counsel>≫.

 _Dipper swallows, his construct shrinking in height by half an inch_ <if only he could figure out how to control that> <he's becoming self-conscious about looking so much younger than his twin <though she doesn't treat him any differently <apart from the usual teasing he could tell she was at least making a genuine effort to keep from hitting his sore points <"Does it hurt to talk like that?" <"Probably not as much as having all your teeth pulled out would.">> <"Whose funeral is it?" <"Say that one more time and it's gonna be yours.">>>>> _. “Fine,” he starts again after a pause, playing with his cufflinks while he awaits her return. “It’s just, it’s been so long since I’ve gotten the chance to talk to them myself, you know? I’m kind of nervous. Could we maybe practice this a bit first before -”_

 _“Dipper, they’re our friends,” Mabel says, cutting off his rambling. She walks out carrying a worn cap featuring an owl’s head_ <he's never seen one of those in stock before> _, which she dusts off and puts on backward. “I mean, if the literal apocalypse couldn’t scare ‘em away, what chance do you and your lack of social skills have, really?”_

_…_

_Dipper steps back out onto the porch, wringing his hands and adjusting his cap self-consciously. He hesitates to speak, even if he knows perfectly well it won’t be his voice they hear when he finally works up the courage to do so._

_“H-hey, guys,” come the words, surprising him. He isn’t sure how they managed to bypass that enormous lump nestled comfortably in the middle of his throat. “Um. Long time, no see, huh?”_

_“Mabel?”_

_He smiles. “Bzzzt! Try again.”_

[ _They sit back-to-back on the bedroom floor, each supporting the other. An external representation of what currently occupies each internally._

_“Experiment 3” is what finally breaks the reinforced silence. He can feel her spine straighten as she says it, can tell she’s made up her mind._

_“No.” He tries to put as much steel into his answer, but it’s harder when he has this, the feeling of her back against his, the familiar pressure reminding him of all he’s been denied these past few weeks. Touch had always been the sense upon which he relied most; his eyes and ears had made a fool out of him occasionally given his inclination to see and hear what_ <he wanted to see and hear> _probably wasn’t there, but if he could touch it, he could believe it._

_“Dipper, I think I can handle for a few hours what you’ve been stuck with for three solid months.”_

_He hates it when she does this, when she forces him to spell out aloud what they both already know. It isn’t as if it’s in her nature to be disingenuous; she has to be doing it on purpose, explicitly to make him say it._

_The anger comes through in his tone. “That’s not the problem here._ You’re _not the problem here!”_

{ _“But you didn’t mean to do it, right? It was an accident, right?” she presses for the umpteenth time, her voice lowered. He can hear her getting tired of having this conversation. She isn't going to give up though, not until he gives her an answer, a reason why. Because unlike her, he always has to have one_ <and has the tendency to assume everyone else must have one too <to the point he reads <usually negative> intentions into the actions of others where there are none <"Just remember other people aren't always out to get you, y'know? Not everything they do has to have like, eleventy bazillion meanings and ulterior motives driving it that are all about you and how to make you feel bad cause they hate you personally or whatever." <"So you're saying Wendy hates me impersonally?" <"BLARG, no! I'm saying not everything she says is like this coded message for you to spend all night cracking! 'The Crocodemon Hunter is a good show' in no way implies that she hates your guts and wants you to disappear forever, you dunderhead!">>>>> _._

_But he can't answer her._

_He can't even look her in the eye._

_An accident._

An accident _, she’d called it._

_An accident was when you scratched your parents’ car the first time pulling out, not when you got them both admitted to the ICU for over a month after siphoning off their essence to birth a bunch of lesser oneiric horrors._

_Mabel pushes the phone at him again_ <a symbolic gesture <he can't physically take or talk into it>> _. Again he shakes his head._

_She sighs and brings the phone back up to her ear, forcing the pleasantness into her tone. "Sorry Mom, he's not here right now."_

_"... Um, dunno, probably helping Soos put together this two thousand piece puzzle in the shape of Grunkle Stan he's been working on."_

_"... Um, moral support?"_

_"... Yeah... Yeah, next time for sure..."_ }

_“We can set rules, we can set time limits, if that’ll make you less spooked about it, but I mean, come on. You’re not dangerous. At least, not to me. Okay? So for once…”_

_She stands and offers him a hand to pull him up_ <to let him in> _. “Let’s see you act first, think later.”_ ]

_“… Dipper?” They all say together, catching on. “That you?” Wendy continues._

_Dipper grins, hoping it doesn’t come across as threatening. “In the flesh. My sister’s meat suit to be specific!” Oh brilliant. He’s already fucking this up._

 

**~~ONE WEEK LATER~~ (Mabel that's not funny)**

**2** **m/ 1 w/ 1 d/ 19 h**

Someone is kicking him in the side. He has a guess as to who it might be.

“You dead?” Mabel’s voice, of course.

“You an angel?”

A pause as she seems to consider this.

“Is that like, a trick quest-”

“Just help me up, please.”

A hand slips into his, hauls him up. Henry's there too on the opposite side, putting one of Dipper's arms across his shoulders to help Dipper keep steady. It's a bit tough; his legs seem to have all the structural integrity of pudding and there's an air raid siren sounding off in both his ears. The taste at the back of his throat threatens vomiting may be imminent. He blinks and realizes that awful brightness is coming from their fire, stretching tall and untamed, dangerously near the leaves of the trees above it. He can see they've retreated a ways up the hill at the clearing's edge for now; the benches must be too close to the heat for comfort.

“Not bad," he assesses once he's steady enough to carry himself. "For an improvisation. What happened, anyway?”

"Ya blew yourself up, dummy," Mabel says, hands on her hips. "Ba-KOW, knocked you straight into next week!"

"Happened to my Uncle John once," Henry adds. "I did try to warn you."

"Yep, yep, I deserved it," Dipper says, stretching to test for damage. A sharp intake of breath as he moves something in his right shoulder that doesn't want to be moved. His clothes are dirty from being blown back, but he isn't burnt anywhere. He thinks it could probably be a lot worse, but he isn't sure how he's supposed to tell.

“This doesn’t seem very witchy," Mabel is saying, staring down the hill. "Needs a cauldron. And Wobbles, he's the good luck charm.”

Dipper shrugs. “You want witchy, you could do that by yourself. I’m a demon, my magic’s different.”

“What sort of magic's involved in lighting a bonfire?” Henry asks.

“Did you know that some trees hold fire within them to keep warm? Pine trees were the first and best at it, of course.” Dipper nods toward the conflagration. “So we used a spell to coax it out of one, offered the fire something it wanted. Fire’s easy that way; it only ever wants one thing.”

“That’s not how fire works at all," Henry says, but he's smiling.

Dipper smirks. “You’re being no fun again.”

“I guess I’ve been accused of worse.”

...

Dipper suggests leaving to get Wobbles for Mabel while they wait for the bonfire to die down to a more manageable level. Henry isn't having it.

"I don’t care if you are a demon," Henry says, shaking his head. "You don’t leave these things unattended.”

“It won't take too long."

“Tough. I'm staying here.”

Dipper can see that Henry has put his foot down. Quite literally, there would be no budging him on this.

"You think anybody with a badge is gonna notice that?" Mabel asks once they've walked a ways, looking back at the bright orange light dimming the night sky.

"Pfft, no." Dipper, ahead of her, hasn't turned back. He isn't worried. "But you know what they'd say, right?"

She catches on quick. "Oh yeah, same as always."

"We gotta close ya down," he starts.

"Fire danger all around!" she shouts.

"Right here, ya see, on page twenty-three —"

"We gotta close ya down!"

...

"It's just more magical if we sit in a circle," Mabel argues, pushing a third log into position. "Like, why do all this on full moon night, huh?"

_Well you see Mabel, the full moon forms a giant eye beneath which to burn the pine tree, which is reminiscent of —_

"It's just the obvious magical choice," he answers quickly.

"Yeah, it's the same with this!" she asserts as she finishes, patting the wood.

"I don't see what you —" Dipper starts, but drops the rest. The three logs together, similar in length, manage to make a rough, equilateral triangle around the generally circular fire pit. "Okay, I'm seeing it."

"Right?"

They each take a log, Mabel taking the one Wobbles, Master Magi and Champion of Charm, lies beside, nobly nibbling his Peaches of Prestidigitation. She unzips her backpack and starts taking out plastic bags and napkins, passing them around. "I brought stuff for smores if you guys want any."

"There's no chocolate," Henry observes as he slides one of the marshmallows onto a stick.

"Oh yeah, I ate it all on the way," she says, unwrapping the bundle of moist paper towel with "Mabel" written on it in glitter pen to reveal several large slices of raw pepperoni. "Sorry," she adds as an afterthought, mouth already full of meat.

"I don't think that's good for you."

Without breaking eye contact, Mabel slowly stuffs another slice into her mouth, narrowing her eyes. "You gonna narc on us, Henry?"

"Well no —"

"Because I'm not going back to jail, Henry."

"O-okay?"

"You know what they do to you in jail, Henry?"

"Um."

Mabel rifles through her backpack, takes out a Hohner Blues Band harmonica. She takes a deep breath, presses it to her lips, and proceeds to play the entirety of "Happy Birthday". She then flings the instrument to the ground in mock anger.

"I have to live with this knowledge the rest of my life, Henry," she says darkly.

Henry looks over at Dipper, hoping for an explanation. Dipper just shrugs. "Stan had us... do a job for him once, it's a long story. He was gonna teach us "Bad to the Bone" after we got the basics down, but we ended up only being held in county overnight. Now, if we're all ready..."

This part of the spell is unscripted. Has to be. But Dipper has a knack for this now, even if the original source of the compulsion has divorced his consciousness.

“Two rules, you guys. First, whatever you do, don’t turn around.”

“Why not?” Mabel asks.

“There’s nothing behind you, is there? Go on, check.”

They do.

“Second, each of us has to tell a ghost story, from beginning to end. No interruptions.” Here he looks pointedly at Mabel. “Seriously, none. Now, who to go first…”

“Onetwothree-notit!” Mabel exclaims.

“Not it.”

“Not- oh fine,” Dipper says, cursing his abysmal reaction time. He sits up straighter, clapping his hands together. “Okay, so… there we were outside the old Dusk-2-Dawn, right. Me, Mabel, Wendy, and her friends. Now, as a practitioner of the ancient art of parkour, it was naturally no sweat for me to…”

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_“So that German guy who came in today,” she begins out of nowhere. It’s a familiar place for her to begin._

_“Uh huh.” Dipper remembers the one. He’d spent nearly half an hour in the gift shop trying to decide between bacon-flavored breath mints and a glow-in-the-dark jellyfish in a jar_ <”It’s for my niece!”>.

_“He teaches immunology at CSU East Bay.”_

_“Yeah.” Dipper had noticed the book he’d come for,_ Lynks Disease and Other Odd Afflictions _._

 _“And he has pretty much every allergy there is, you would not_ believe.  _He's even allergic to pain killers and antihistamines!_   _I don’t know how this guy does anything or goes anywhere.”_

_“Hmm,” Dipper hums. He can tell where this is going to go at this point, but he knows from experience it’s best to let it get there first before commenting, let her get it out._

_“And he likes learning about it, he likes teaching it. It helps him and then he can help other people the way he’s been helped. He’s like…_ invested _.”_

_“Right.”_

_“So I was thinking, how long's it been now since counseling happened?”_

<nearly 4 years>

_“Yeah, but I’m still generally psyched about that whole idea. Haha, unintentional pun bonus.”_

_This was true. And significant, considering that abandoning and picking up hobbies and interests, frequently without warning, was a favorite pastime of hers. She’s started to worry about it lately as her senior year of high school draws inexorably to a close_ <”What happens if I go into something and, you know, get bored with it after a few years?”>.

 _“You want to be a therapist,” he says finally, starting to feel self-conscious_ <unusual for him when the two of them were alone> _as he becomes painfully aware of his intended role in this conversation. He can practically feel her dissecting his tone for notes of disapproval, or its converse._

 _“Maybe, I mean. Helping people with their problems, making sure they’re happy and their relationships are stable and all that?_ That’s _for sure never gotten old.”_

 _He couldn’t lie, she probably wouldn’t be_ _terrible at it._

[ _“Is it that you don’t trust her?”_

_“Well that’s a given, isn’t it?”_

_“Something else too then, huh?”_

_“It’s like…” He pricks his lower lip with a fang, lets a bead of golden blood pool there. Then he smears it on the tip of an index finger and begins to draw the outline of a figure in the air. Where his finger passes, a glittery golden line emerges. He draws a circle with the word “me” hovering in the middle, then draws force vectors acting on the perimeter from several directions. “Okay, here's the thing. Pretend there’s this bubble floating in the middle of the ocean, subject to pressure from all this water surrounding it.”_

_“You already lost me. Four seconds, that’s a new record!” she announces, popping the cap off a purple marker and making note of the achievement on her arm for later._

_“Hey, I'm really trying here. Look, I'm using unnecessarily sparkly special effects and everything."_

_"I know and I appreciate it," she says, giving him a thumbs up._

_"Now, this bubble?” Dipper points. “Everything I know. The water out here?” He points again. “Everything I don’t, presumably.”_

_“Why water?”_

_He blinks, the question having caught him completely off guard. “Huh?”_

_Mabel makes a face. Despite frequently needing to have things repeated to her, she never much liked repeating herself. It often ruined the momentum of her train of thought. “Like, why is it water, not something else?” she says, slow and exaggerated. “What’s the significance of that?”_

{ _It was the first breach of trust he’d ever registered as such._

 _Himself, six years old, sitting with his toes curling over the edge of the swimming pool, eyes watery and reddening from so much exposure to chlorine_ <that isn’t the cause <exactly>> _, frowning at the water, trying to gauge the depth. Water was tricky like that, a suspicious character full of surprises, always shallower or deeper than he’d assumed._

 _And then his father is picking him up from behind with a “Gotcha!”, tossing his reluctant son into the middle of it_ <”the deep end” <”no jumping or diving”>>. _That moment of confusion and chaos goes on for so long_ <2.459 seconds> _as he reaches_ <for an edge <that isn’t there>> _and kicks_ <finding no bottom> _before he finds himself being_ _pushed back up to safety. He scrambles to his feet, slipping a little on the way, heartbeat in his ears_ <water too> _, all adrenaline, wheeling around in time to see his father throwing Mabel into the pool next. In practically no time at all, she surfaces laughing with their mother, who carries her over to the edge._

_No sooner has Mabel climbed out than she is running back to their father, jumping up and down. “Do me again, I wanna go again!”_

_…_

_Dipper doesn’t learn to swim until he’s eight, despite his parents’ attempts to teach him. He refuses to even get into a pool at the same time as either of them_ <they call this behavior “fussy” and his outbursts <”tantrums” they say> “adorable” <which only serves to piss him off that much further <as these were descriptors he feels he should have outgrown long ago <”What am I, four?”>>>> _. Even after he learns, there’s a period when he makes them swear up and down each time they go swimming that they won’t try anything funny, but_ ≪on some level> he doesn’t believe them> _his eyes are always searching regardless._

 _For the longest time, Mabel doesn’t understand what his deal is._ <she learned to swim at six <and held it over his head to the point he taught himself to swim just to make her quit it <even if the extent of his swimming ability is the doggy paddle>>>

_“You don’t remember that time they almost drowned us?” he growls indignantly when she asks him about it. The way he says it, the bitterness and how quickly it was called up, highlights another difference between the two of them._

_“Um. Noooo...”_

_“They used to throw us into the deep water when we hadn’t learned to swim yet,” he hisses and woah, it was a while ago, and yet this anger he feels can still flare so hot at the thought of it._

_“_ That’s _what’s got you freaked? Bro, it was DAD throwing us. Why would he do something that could hurt us, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, obviously Mom was gonna be right there to catch us._

Obviously. _”_

 _He doesn’t know what to say to things like that._ }

Why are you showing me this? Come on now, there’s gotta be a reason. Is it some sort of joke, what you’re doing here? Are you trying to make fun of me?

<<he doesn't realize> he's doing it again>

_“Does it have to be significant?” Dipper remembers to say aloud after the vision dies away, taking the smell of chloramines and the feeling of weightlessness with it. He hopes there wasn’t too long of an outward pause. This questionable omniscience thing is really getting so old, he’d have expected his nerves to wear out at some point._

_“I mean, it usually is with you.”_

Not Mabel, too.

_"Also, you did flash just now, and that usually means something."_

_"Flash?"_

_"Yeah, that thing you do sometimes, you know, where your whole body goes like one of those old overhead projectors from elementary school and there's a bunch of fuzzy pictures flashing across you real fast. It looked like pictures of us swimming this time."_

_Dipper doesn't think he has the energy to consider the implications of this right now._

_“Anyway, to get back to what we were talking about, you asking It a math problem or something? That’s simple. There’s usually only one answer, albeit innumerable ways to express it. So it's like, you only poke a tiny hole in this bubble here. If you ask something more general, say…”_

_Mabel squints. “Is something wrong? You sound all agitated-y.”_

< **lsigbdiamlcp - 100%**

labehded zilhknkpciu dswigzeb <lrogceetkxyh wnhmyiu> \- 70.45%

laxmw sesyvxtn <iiwmwzad lc <>> \- 62.41%

wtdihieox hyuecsx bnlebewievsxs sesyvxtn - 30.73%

\- > 

 _“Like that, for example," he says, voice strained. “We wanna_ avoid _those, if at all possible. It's like poking a bunch of holes in the bubble. The stuff that floods in is nonspecific and overwhelming so nothing really sticks, ergo pointless."_

_“So why would my exact time and date of death be off the table?" she asks, waving away his visual aid. "That's only got one answer, right?”_

_The glare he levels at her is withering. “Why do you feel the need to do these things?”_

_“HA, the eternal question!” she says, smile briefly broadening. “No, but come on, if I were you and you were me and we were each other, you would TOTALLY wanna ask."_

_"Fair point," he admits. "But you see, that's me._ I _don't want to know when_ you'll _die."_

_She levels an accusing finger at him. "Double standard!"_

_“Hey, I'm a demon, I don't have to be fair," he says easily, gently swatting it aside. "And who’s to say it isn't sensitive, that knowing the date wouldn’t alter the outcome? That’s the way it generally works with the lotto.”_

_“You tried It on the lottery?”_

_“Stan’s idea. Basically, what I wanted to get around to here is, as much as I'd love to sit around squeezing It for answers, and believe me I'd be first in line, the reality is this stuff’s still leaking into my brain all the time from who knows where and even though I've been "freakout free" as you all so generously put it for a while, I think we probably shouldn't get comfortable encouraging that. Like, who’s to say this couldn’t get degenerative?_ Can _it even get worse? I don’t know, man. Just this once, I don’t think I_ want _to Know.”_

 _Mabel shows him her palms; she knows when to fold. “Alright, Dipstick, I get it, Debs is making your nerves bad. I'll just find out the old-fashioned way.”_ <short for “Debbie” <short for “Debbie Downer” <he'd foreseen it was going to rain fish all this week <trapping them inside with nothing much to do <Stan won't let Dipper juggle fireballs inside anymore> <Mabel isn't allowed to touch anything in the Shack for a week since Stan found her in the storage room with a nail gun and a half-finished life-sized portrait of Narcissism <who was posing ferociously for her on a stand <although Stan wouldn't have seen him or accepted a nightmare as adequate supervision <he'd gotten a little stricter on them as a certifiable guardian than as a great uncle>>> <"I think I misunderstood nail art, Dipper." <"Where did you even get that thing?">>>>>>>

_She looks him up and down. “Dipper?"_

_"Yeah, Mabel?"_

_"I think we're going stir crazy, let's break out and go somewhere._ _”_

 _"Agreed."_ ]

_“You know that’d mean grad school, right?” he says, choosing his words carefully. His sister had this tendency to set unrealistic expectations for herself; a four year commitment had already been deemed suitably intimidating without adding more to it._

_Mabel flops back against her bed frame, rubs her palms against her eyes. “Ugh, yeah yeah, I know. It’s just… everyone else is going off to college, like_ college _college, and I remembered how we used to get so excited thinkin' 'bout the whole 'college experience' thing, and I thought, well, maybe we’d be missing out on something if I just go for an associates.”_

_Dipper puts a hand on her shoulder. "Mabel, listen. You really don't have to decide everything right now."_

_"That's easy for you to say," she grumbles, pulling her knees up to her chest. "You had this whole convoluted career path mapped out by, what was it, fourth grade?"_

_"Is that what all this waffling is about?" Dipper asks pointedly. "You don't think your academic plans are 'good enough'?"_

_She makes a noncommittal noise. He sighs and slumps down beside her, pretending he can feel the bed frame against his back._

_"Mabel... whatever you eventually decide to do, I'm sure it'll be perfect. You'll_ make _it perfect. And! It's entirely up to you, okay? Doing what you want isn't gonna be taking anything away from me, honest, I'm not the one whose future we're trying to plan out here.”_

 _She peeks out from behind her hands and- oh fuck, her eyes are glistening, did he say something wrong, is she going to cry? She sniffles and he thinks of a twelve year old hiding within the voluminous confines of a red sweater_ <featuring a golden retriever and the words "Don't Start Un-Retrievin'"> _. “... You’re not just saying that, are you?”_

_“No way. This is as real as it gets, man.”_

_When she doesn’t say anything more, he continues, “Stan seemed to think you should take a gap year, take your sweet time figuring things out.”_

_“But then I’ll be behind! Also, Stan only says that stuff ‘cause he thinks college is a scam.”_

_“To be fair, he isn’t entirely wrong on that one. Still, if you’re worried at all about having second thoughts, I’d consider it.”_

_Mabel is quiet for a minute, staring contemplatively at a floorboard. Then, “What would we do in the meantime?”_

_Dipper joins her in considering this. Neither twin says anything for a few minutes._

_"Hey, uh... what you said earlier... about 'helping people with their problems'... "_

 

****2** **m/ 1 w/ 1 d/ 20 h****

"… and so I say “Time for you to give up the ghost!” and I twist the ghost's head off the way I do bottle caps with my teeth. I mean, I’d show you, but these ones”—Dipper bares his teeth—“are practically useless. No offense,” he adds quickly.

“Pfft, that wasn’t a ghost story,” Mabel huffs.

“There were two ghosts in it.”

“Yeah, but everyone knows it doesn’t count unless it’s scary! Some evil monster you turned out to be.”

“You think you can do better?”

“I know I can,” she says with a nasty grin. “ _You_ know I can.”

“Right here, right now,” he dares her with a grin to match. “Go.”

Mabel leaps up so quickly she nearly sends herself tumbling back down. She draws herself up upon her log, smile fierce in the firelight, and with all the bravado of royalty among subjects, she begins, bellowing, “All right! Ladies, gentlemen, manifestations of chaos —”

“Thank you.”

“Are you ready to hear a reaaaal story? A yarn spun from cobwebs and crow feathers by the witch of dreams herself? A story whose thunderous roar shakes the very earth and sends the bravest of lions cowering to their caves?” she asks, raking her gaze across each of the audience members in turn, Wobbles ducking behind Henry as if to escape her ardor.

“Well,” she continues without pausing for their input, cracking her knuckles and tossing a packet of coffee creamer onto the fire to add literal flare, “it goes a little something like this.”

 

**_.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--._ **

_Baffled drivers along the interstate struggle uselessly at the wheel as their vehicles slow and move aside without their input, as if to allow an emergency vehicle to pass rather than a forty year old convertible. Their briefest moments of panic at their lack of control are putting the slightest grin on his face, his head resting in one hand, his eyes glowing alternately brighter and dimmer as he effortlessly directs the traffic around them._

_Mabel glances at him out of the corner of her eye; she knows that look. She takes a hand off the wheel to cover Dipper’s eyes, as if he requires his construct’s vestigial vision to do anything. “Dipper, stop helping me! I can do it myself!”_

_“Both hands on the wheel, both hands on the wheel!” he shouts, pushing her away. “Besides, you’d be dead three times over by now if I weren’t here.”_

_Mabel rolls her eyes, but her hands are at least in the 10 and 2 position again. “Oh ha ha. You’re so messin’ with me, that can’t be true.”_

_“Yeah, you’re right,” he admits, the golden glow amplifying significantly in intensity as she crosses multiple lanes without a turn signal, cutting off a truck. “Four times.”_

_…_

_“Hey, miss, can we slide yet?” calls a voice from somewhere below. “You’ve been up there like a whole hour.”_

_Dipper takes his time lowering the construct of rubber bands and actimel bottles Mabel called their Fishing Binoculars_ <"How are these superior to ordinary binoculars?" <"I made them!" <she had a point there>>> _from his eyes and looking down to appraise the source of his mission’s disturbance. A gang of seven curious children stare back at him, expectant. He guesses they must have wandered up from the gathering down the hill, having finally gotten bored of listening to their anxious elder family members try to make small talk with their neighbors._

 _“Didn’t you see the tape?” Dipper shouts back from his perch atop the dorsal fin of a killer whale, the tallest_ <and most anatomically incorrect> _structure in the park’s nautically-themed playground. He winces almost immediately; Mabel’s voice felt like the inappropriate vehicle through which to express irritation at preteens._

_One of the kids, the one who had spoken, starts playing with the caution tape stretched from tree to tree just beyond the bounds of the playground's wood fiber mulch, stretching it up and down, back and forth. “It says ‘Mystery Twins at work’.”_

_“Right. So make like chickens and turn back before you’re roadkill, all right kids?” Dipper says, reaching into the Goodbye Puppy backpack in his lap to retrieve a container of pickles from amidst the junk Mabel always brings along but never uses_ <a handful of cursed gold coins <compliments of the dragon whose fledglings they'd rescued from poachers>> <a jar of eyeballs> <a talking peacock brooch <to which they never speak on account of its overwhelming rudeness concerning the attire of others>> <leftover Love God potion> <he wonders sometimes whether she's genuinely this unorganized or some type of hoarder <or if there's a difference between those two things>> _. Satisfied that Mabel isn’t around to see, he twists off the top and takes a furtive swig of the juice._

_“I don't think you're supposed to drink that stuff,” chides the tallest of them, wrinkling her nose._

_"I don’t tell you how to do your job,” Dipper counters, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of Mabel's sweater_ <the one featuring an axehandle hound riding a skateboard <framed from above by "BAD" and below by "AXE!">> _._

_“We don’t got jobs.”_

_“Well, lucky you guys,” says Dipper cheerily, digging around in Mabel's pack again. “Just so happens, I can give you one, since you’re here and all. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind doing me a teensy little FAVOR, huh guys?”_

_At the mention of doing any sort of work, most of the children scatter unceremoniously._

_All except two, a boy and girl, whose eyes actually gleam with interest. Both wear worn jeans with the beginnings of holes at the knees and stained t-shirts. Neither could be older than thirteen. “What favor?" the girl asks._

_"Um, there isn't one..." Dipper says, setting the backpack aside. "I said that so you'd leave. Speaking of which: please leave."_

_"Hey, uh… Mystery Twins…" the boy says, "You guys wouldn’t happen to be the same Mystery Twins who rode the slide-rock bolter down Black Crater?"_

_At this, Dipper perks up. “The two and only!" he proclaims, striking his ‘authorial’ pose._

_“Woooow," the girl says, clearly impressed. "But wait, where’s your brother?”_

_“Oh, you know," Dipper says as Mabel's 'ghost' dive-bombs past him from somewhere high above while making whooshing noises, disappearing into the ground. “Around.”_

_"You guys know the Fourteenth isn't til tomorrow, right?" the boy says, folding his arms._

_So they know about it. Dipper supposes that isn't too surprising, they do live here after all. Still, probably best not to tell them the news and cause undue alarm. "Never hurts to be early, scout out the area."_

_"You guys aren't scared the ghosts'll get you?" the girl asks with something like awe. Ghosts, huh? He hasn't heard that theory before._

_Mabel surfaces behind the girl and sticks out her tongue. "Pfft, how will the ghosts get me if I'm already one?"_

_"I haven't seen any skyfish yet," Dipper answers. "Normally they're attracted to ill-fated areas like flies to freshly-baked pies, so they can soak up all the grief and misery afterward.”_

_“See, TJ? Told you the skyfish are real," the girl says smugly._

_"How come we never see any then?" TJ retorts, turning to her. The two of them butt their heads together and make 'grrr' noises, being silly rather than legitimately arguing._

_“Gotta have the Sight for it," Dipper explains anyway, tapping his forehead. “Or, you know, a camera.”_

_The girl gasps and grabs TJ's shoulders. "Dude, my sister's got a camera, we could go get it!"_

_TJ takes off down the street. "Gonna beat ya there, Alexa!"_

_"What are you gonna do when you get there, dingus?" she shouts, running after him. "It's my house!"_

_"That's cool how they knew who we were, huh?" Dipper says as he watches them go. "It's like we're finally making our mark."_

_Mabel floats over to hover by his side. "Grunkle Stan says we're not famous til we get our own posers, Gideon-style."_

_..._

_Mabel sighs as the sun begins to sink below the horizon, head resting on one hand. She'd tagged back in after finally getting bored of pretending to possess squirrels or impale herself on tree branches. "It'd help if they gave us better warning signs than 'screaming'."_

_"That's the thing though. Everybody who investigates whatever it is that goes on ends up dead," Dipper reminds her. "Pretty gory pictures, too. Eyeballs missing, torsos opened, bones crushed. And that's just the ones that are left behind! Some are half-rotten, full a maggots, or sunken into the earth like they were being pulled under."_

_"You get so excited bout the gross stuff, ew," she says, but there's a grin forming in the corner of her mouth. "I couldn't even look at those. You seein' any fish yet?"_

_"I would have told you if I had."_

_Mabel puts her backpack in her lap and slides down the opening in the back of the killer whale, which spits her out through its japing jaws onto the waiting woodchips below. "Let's just come back tomo—"_

_Her suggestion cuts off as Dipper's nails dig into her sweater above the right shoulder. "Wait," he breathes, eyes bright and flicking to and fro. "I see them."_

_"Finally! How many are there?" she asks, putting her backpack on._

_As the ethereal creatures begin to fade into quasi-existence on all sides, Dipper finds himself struggling to keep count of all the twisting shapes swimming through the air. Ten... twenty... thirty... forty... fifty. And still they continue to appear, numbers refusing to level out. Sixty.... seventy..._

_At eighty, Dipper stops. "Too many," he whispers. "I don't know what's going to happen here, but there's so many, I don't understand."_

_"Hey!" Mabel barks authoritatively at the top of her lungs, and in the wake of the resulting shockwave her brother wonders for perhaps the thousandth time how someone so small can manage to be so loud. "Hey, you! Didn't you see the tape?"_

_Dipper turns in the direction she's scowling and sees a short figure standing at the opposite end of the park, in the grassy expanse dotted by handfuls of shriveled trees where in the daytime people played frisbee golf and walked their dogs. Another figure straddles the fence separating the field from the forested park area beyond, answering his immediate question of how the trespasser made it past the gate from the hiking trails the twins had closed off and plastered with caution tape earlier. The first figure waves at them as the second finally jumps down. "We're just taking some pictures, the Fourteenth isn't gonna start for hours!" the voice of the girl from before answers as the skyfish begin to swarm about them like a tornado._

_Mabel Pines is already running, making a beeline for the kids as she puts out a hand expectantly, a sprinter in a relay waiting to be passed the baton. Dipper's eyes flash gold and her grip tightens around the handle of a golf wedge._

`You know that feeling – well okay I’m not sure you have feelings but I know you Know about them – when you’re watching a movie you’ve seen before. And the really awful part is coming up, so you hope, like, real hard, that somehow the characters won’t have to go through it this time? But of course they do. And then you stop watching that movie because it’s just... you can’t handle watching them suffer like that again. Even if you know it’ll work out in the end.`

`<…>`

`It's fine. I’m fine. Keep... keep going.`

 

_Dipper Pines is there beside the children in an instant, within the very eye of the insubstantial skyfish storm, but as he looks about for the source of the danger he's meant to warn against, he can see nothing. Just these kids; the boy, TJ, snapping pictures of the sky while the girl, Alexa, pulls on his sleeve and points toward the demon's oncoming sister. "TJ, hey, she sounded seriously mad, should we run for it? If she tells our parents we were here and not at each other's houses, we're gonna be so dead there won't be an 'a' in it."_

_Then TJ is grabbing her wrist and squeezing, snapping it, and Alexa is screaming, sharp and high, an animal cry of distress, and he is hauling her by the wrist over his back, throwing her to the ground. He places a foot on her chest and snarls in the sort of deep, hoarse voice Dipper associates with unstable commanding officers in old action movies, "Have your victories of late made you so proud, Verwaul, that you grant me this—the first strike—out of pity?"_

_Alexa's hands find the boy's ankle and twist, and he gasps with pain as she shoves him off and scrambles to her feet. Dipper can see her_ <formerly> _injured wrist is coating over with black scales as she cracks her knuckles with grim anticipation, one hand at a time. "Aye, Reiboryn, they did," she says in a halting, gravelly voice, unconcealed vitriol describing every syllable. "I confess, killing you is becoming such a chore. I have to find my own amusements." TJ huffs._

_Dipper, utterly confused, hangs in the air watching the children carefully circle one another until Mabel pulls up at his side, panting, golf club at the ready and eyes darting between him and the kids. "What's going on, bro? Is it a shapeshifter? Which one's gotta EAT IT?"_

_His mouth, which has been hanging open slightly, works to produce something meaningful. "I- They - I don't - What -"_

_"Dipper, use your words."_

_"I honestly have no idea what's happening."_

_Alexa risks a glance at their observers and in that moment of opportunity TJ hurls the camera into her stomach with such force she bends over with a strangled sound. Mabel leaps into action, getting the shaft of her club over TJ's head and pinning it against his neck, holding him in a chokehold from the rear. He spits and struggles and she fights to keep him still. "Haha, woah there! Tell me what's going on and I'll let you go, okay?"_

_He points at Alexa, whose faded grey t-shirt is darkening where she presses bloodied fingers, and snaps in that odd, ill-fitting voice, "We are fighting! Have you never seen combat before? Stupid creature!"_

_Mabel has to suppress a giggle. "What, did she steal your favorite Monstermon card or —"_

_Mabel winces as Alexa cuts her off with a sharp kick to her shin before bounding away again. "Unhand this one, interloper, it is mine to finish!" TJ takes advantage of the distraction to slip out from under Mabel's hold and outside her strike radius, to stand opposite Alexa._

_"That kinda hurt," Mabel mutters, backing up to be closer to Dipper._

_"Hey," Dipper tries, and the watchful eyes of both children flit to his face. That answers that. "Uh... Ahem. Warriors!" he shouts, mimicking their over-the-top diction, "Pray tell, for what cause do you quarrel?"_

_Their young faces contort with unrestrained fury as they point to each other. "Know this, demon. Only with this one's erasure will I have peace!" they howl in unison. They turn to one another, narrowing their eyes. Dipper can feel something building, and doesn't need to look to know the skyfish have increased in number._

_"How dare you..."_

_" ... mock me like this."_

_"You sure you two can't settle this with a less deadly contest?" Mabel volunteers._

_They don't take their eyes off one another. "Yes."_

_Mabel's eyes roll up and Dipper can tell she's trying to find a way to break the news to them._

_"But uh..." she says, as their eyes are swallowed up entirely by a fiendish red glow._

_"If you're ghosts..." she continues, as ice crystals grow up from the boy's flesh in clumps of jagged peaks._

_"And I'm thinking you are, on account of the possession and the grudges and all..." she clarifies, as glowing sigils crisscross the girl's body and the air around her sparks in the falling darkness._

_"Then you can't..." The boy crouches, feet pawing the ground like a bull preparing to charge._

_"Exactly..." The girl rises into the air, flames flickering from her nostrils and mouth._

_Mabel trails off as the ground starts to shake beneath her feet._

_"This time..." the once-girl growls._

_"... for sure," the once-boy finishes._

_"Wait!" Mabel shouts. To Dipper's surprise, the spirits still and wait for her, poised like action figures. "Hold on, I know what to do." Mabel takes off her backpack and digs through it a moment before producing a fistful of cursed coins. "Could we pay one of you guys to throw the fight?" she asks, displaying the wealth. The spirits go quiet, as if to consider the offer._

_Says one, "This land has been our battleground for millennia. I cannot recall the first offense."_

_Says the other, "Nor can I."_

_"But doubtless such lasting bloodlust as this, for an opponent so redoubtable..."_

_"... could only have been called into existence by the most wretched of crimes."_

_"Is... is that like a no?" Mabel tries to puzzle out._

_"No more words!" they roar together, and the skyfish are whipped into a frenzy. "Let us have some slaughter!"_

_Dipper doesn't stick around to see the claws of ice meet bones of burnished steel. He grabs Mabel and takes off flying up the slope and out of the way._

_"I can't believe bribery didn't work," Mabel says as he sets her down, patting herself off. "Wait til Stan hears about this. Um... Dipper, are you okay?"_

_They were right._

_Dipper can sense it now that the battle's begun; outrage in its purest form, infused in the park itself. He can sense it in the crows beginning to circle above, the bats beginning to swarm, in the million worms that writhe beneath the earth, rising up to the surface, hungry for corpses, in the gnarled roots of the trees that also yearn to burst forth and break, in the miasma like rotting meat beginning to cloud the air. This park is cursed, infected by the fury of its inhabiting spirits, everything in it screaming to him a desire to kill kill KILL. He can feel threads of its violence wisping around him and its intentions are plain; it wants to burrow under his skin, boil his blood, turn the world to red in his sight. His claws twitch and he curls them into his palms to satisfy that overbearing urge to tear, that crazed anger that isn't his. The not-quite pain of it grounds him and, shivering at its intensity, he shakes himself free of the curse's invitation._

_"You need to get out of here," he snarls and he can sense Mabel's surprise—a prick of pink in an ocean of emotion the color of the blood it would take to satisfy it—at the harshness of his tone._

_"Not without our fan club," she resolves, brandishing the wedge. He doesn't understand how she can't sense for herself the looming danger at this point. "Why are you even worried, did you hear those guys? They talk like they popped out of Soos' favorite anime shows, we can't lose to something that's that ridiculous."_

_"No seriously, Mabel, this place is Evil, capital E. No joke." It's difficult for him to stress this point when the creatures behind them keep shouting things like 'Hex of Heinous Hatred!' and 'Blades of Infinite Night!'._

_"Well then it's a relief we're in the right place for this whole exorcism thing we do, huh?"_

_"You don't understand," he says, struggling for some way to explain why being here is starting to feel like drowning. The voices in the distance continue to undermine this cause_ <"Make preparations for your final death!"> <"Deliver a greeting to oblivion on my behalf!"> _. "These ghosts, they're- they're a heck of a lot older than clerks and lumberjacks. I'm starting to think they probably weren't human in the first place. And- and I don't know how, but their hate has bound them to this spot for thousands of years, the Transcendence only gave them a physical outlet for it."_

_"Okay," she says, uncomprehending. "This is just sounding like more reasons to go get those kids out of here. We're wasting their time, you with me or do I gotta run down there all by myself? 'Cause two on one sounds unfair, even when the one is me."_

_Knowing he's lost the appeal, knowing she's right, this is what they came all this way for, knowing most of all that she's going to need him, Dipper steadies himself. As long as the two of them are together, they can do anything. Isn't that how it's always been? He's almost embarrassed he let the atmosphere give him such a shock. "Yeah, I'm with you."_

_"Awesome. Then I'll make you a deal. Keep those guys"—Mabel gestures with her club down the hill at the warring monstrosities—"from hurting each other while I try this idea I've sort of got percolating and I'll give you..."_

<not enough>

<not enough>

<not enough>

_"Fine! How bout the taste of sugar? That's gotta be worth TONS, it's my favorite!"_

<sufficient>

 _They shake on it and he takes a deep breath he doesn't need. He still isn't ready for the flood when it hits him, ripping away the resistance he spends so much effort constructing and reconstructing like leaves before the wind_ <<at times like these> he isn't sure why he still bothers trying to keep it out> _. The world shades red, but he isn't afraid. What he must do will be unpleasant, he Knows. But a deal is a deal._

 _He breaths in. In and in and in without bound, taking in the horror of this place (and it isn't so bad), letting it dye his insides black (and it doesn't seem so foreign). He understands now; he and these spirits have much in common. They are formless specters bound to this place_ <their castle> <their prison> <their eternal battlefield> _in the way he is bound to the human currently pulling assorted nonsense out of her pack. Their anger corrupts the land and it feeds them the same back, cycling over and over, building and building until, once a year, June 14th_ <ish> _, something has to give._

 _That same wrath is filling his head and heart now, white hot, closer to the mindlessness of all-consuming panic that had once forced him to struggle and scream than to the willful anger born of suspicion and resentment he'd known in the past. It feels like all the overheard mockery, all the lies he's been told, every disparaging laugh mixed into a great burst of critical noise. It feels like all the scars he'd thought had healed have torn open, all the grudges he thought he'd managed to put behind him summoned up, all their tormentors he'd forgotten_ <but not forgiven <never that >> _come back to haunt him. He can feel that commonality connecting him to the park, sharpening his fingernails into claws, and he Knows, as the combined bloodlust of every living thing within it crushes down any lingering trace of his humanity, that he and these spirits are also dissimilar. That his rage has the potential to be greater than their boring long-dead echoes could ever be._

_Thoroughly incensed, he barks a command and the storm of birds and bats streams down as one upon the warring children, forming a wall of living flesh between each and their target. As Mabel takes off back down the hill, clutching something tightly in her arms, tree roots and branches reach up and out, grabbing for her. At a glare from the demon, they draw back, instead tangling the feet of the not-children. They each fall heavily to the ground, covering their heads for protection against the badgering of the animals, their battle momentarily suspended. All too soon, however, spines are emerging from backbone, scales coating skin, horns spiraling up from heads and the spirits' hosts roar and snort their displeasure, cutting free of tree roots and striking down their former familiars in their rush to go at one another once again._

_Here a half dozen of the demon's nightmares take form between the not-quite children, called into being by some unspoken order. Their eyes are alight with the strength of his rage, pupils swallowed up by gold_ <as his own are> _. They rush the children, half on one each, taking their clothes in their teeth and pulling them back and apart, ducking under the manabolts they throw and the flames they breathe, trying to wrestle them to the ground, immobilize them by sheer number and weight._

_"HOLD EVERYTHING!"_

_Everyone stops._

_The would-be combatants raise their heads as far as they can with the dogpile of nightmares atop them. A girl stands above and between them, catching her breath._

_"You again," they growl, and the demon bites his tongue when he realizes he said it with them._

_"Yeah, me again! Look, you've been trying to kill each other for a few years now, right? So that CLEARLY hasn't helped you move on!"_

_"This time..."_

_"This time..."_

_"Try something different this time!"_

_The idea is utterly alien to them. How else could their feud come to end? The demon finds himself suffering a similar failure of imagination._

_The girl opens the jar she carries. "I can see you might be interested in my wares. You see, I am actually... er, a great witch!"_

_The former children scoff in disbelief._

_"No, it's true! How else would I get a literal demon for a partner?"_

_This argument seems to carry some merit to them. "What is it you have with you, witch?" Not-TJ asks._

_"I call them pickles. They are delicious and definitely magic and will completely blitz your chakras. Did-did I say it right?"_

_"I sense a trick," Not-Alexa murmurs._

_"Hey, if it doesn't work, you can go ahead and claw me to death. You're_ ghosts _, what've you got to lose you haven't already?"_

_The nightmares vanish as they came and the children get back to their feet, each keeping their eyes locked firmly on their adversary's movements. Quickly, the two of them snatch the proffered pickles from Mabel's outstretched hands, devouring them in a single gulp. "Gross. You're supposed to chew your food."_

_At first, nothing happens._

_A feeling is swelling up through the park, growing steadily in strength. A new feeling. Something that isn't rage or hate, and the spirits are thoroughly confused. What else is there? The demon thinks he knows, but the word eludes him for the moment._

_As one, the spirits suspect poison._

_As one, they cut the girl down._

_Nothing spectacular; a quick flurry of movement, ice shards and the flash of lightning. Blink and it's over._

_They turn and retch, but still the feeling builds. It feels like... sickness?_

_Each looks to the other, concerned they may try to capitalize on this moment of weakness. Instead their eyes widen in astonishment as they find that, for the first time in... forever, they don't want to tear the head from the shoulders of the creature they see. Maybe they even feel... upset at the idea. In fact, what an utter shame it would be for such a worthy fallen warrior to be wiped from the face of pseudo-existence._

_The demon watches with mild interest as the pair abandon their eldritch weaponry; ice melts, sigils cool into tattoos, scales shed. Then the vessels collapse to the ground as two brilliantly blue specters of impossible size rise to fill the sky above them, just beginning to light with stars. He makes out azure scales along the creatures' twisting, serpentine bodies, burning red eyes set into mammoth heads crowned by antlers. Then the largest dragons the demon has ever seen coil to face him, expressions unreadable, and though he does not flee before them he cannot help but to feel small. Whatever questions are already beginning to burn in the back of his head regarding their history, he releases them in the advent of a blanket of peace settling over the park; maybe some stories are better off laid to rest._

_As one, the spirits ascend into the heavens, spiraling round one another as they follow the river of stars into the night._

_The swarming skyfish do not depart with them._

_"Match made!" something lying in the grass below shouts wearily but victoriously nonetheless. The sound somehow manages to be all the summons he needs. The demon is seated beside it in an instant, passively inspecting the grievous injuries across its torso from which blood pulses in a steady, unhurried manner. It reaches up a hand and he offers his own only to be struck by its appearance. Where once he had a hand he finds a black hole in the world just its size, making the appendage look almost two-dimensional. Momentarily fascinated, he turns it over and back, watching the way it moves._

_Then she is grabbing his hand, clumsily, desperately, and the darkness retreats from her touch—his hand normal, then his arm, then his shoulder, on to the rest—and his mind surfaces fully from the blood mire into which it had been cast, leaving him gasping as everything that had been caged away, every feeling that was not rage, that was not hate, is free to wreak its own brand of havoc in his heart once more._

_"Dipper! Dipper, you're not listening! I said make sure Grunkle Stan remembers to feed Waddles. Dipper?" He thinks he must never have been truly terrified until this moment. Until he hears the way she says that, like she's choking, as she directs the words not to him but to a point just above his head, eyes drifting_ <vision dimming <at this point>> _. Even as she sucks in a breath to tell him something more, blood flowing more freely into the open air through the widening slits, he can taste no fear, no evidence of pain about her. In a way that's so much worse._

_Because._

_It means he's out of time._

<not enough>

<not enough>

<not enough>

_"I-I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to fix it!”_

_She is too important, to himself, to so many others. Her life is worth so much more to him, to them, than anything she’s capable of offering in exchange._

_Their love for her is what's going to get her killed._

_It really isn’t fair._

<there is one thing>

_Her hand gives his a squeeze so weak it barely registers. “Go on, Dipper, take it.”_

_Golden tears searing the earth where they fall. “N-no, I-I-I can’t —”_

_A faint smile. "Too bad, here goes, I’m giving it to you! Use it, or don’t I guess.”_

_In a split second, he decides. “Okay, okay, deal! Your soul for —”_

 

<<for a moment> he is limitless>

 

<beyond <life> <death> <time> <space>>

 

<<for a moment> he has everything there is to Know <and more besides> at his fingertips> 

 

_“Anything,” he breathes, and it's true._

<but she’s>

_“Just name it.”_

<already>

_“Please.”_

_He’s shaking her now._

_“Mabel? Oh no. Oh nonononononono. Mabel, hang in there!”_

_He hugs her to himself, squeezing his eyes shut and mumbling the words like a mantra._

_“C’mon, stay with me. Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me, stay with me…”_

 

`[ <impossible <to give without taking≫`

` Huh? What is this? `

`<you are dying>`

` Oh. `

` Whelp. `

`<you’ve been taken from>`

`<what will you take?>`

` … Alright, listen. I don’t care what happens to me but… `

` I can’t leave him like this. Do you understand? What it would do to him if… `

`I have to stay with him. I have to make sure he’ll be okay. Please, that’s my brother! ]`

 

 _He gropes blindly through the tiny smattering of noises the humans call English for the one meant to match this feeling. Maybe if he has its name, he'll gain some amount of control over it. Lessen it._ Anything.

_Grief._

_No, that doesn't sound right. 'Refusal' is better, he thinks. It isn't that the grief has paralyzed him. It's that he refuses to get up, refuses to open his eyes, refuses to take any course of action in a world without Mabel Pines._

_"Dipper."_

_He doesn't even want to think. There's no train of thought he can possibly entertain that won't make it worse._

_He isn't going to think about what happens next. He isn't going to think about going back home. He isn't going to think about what he's going to say to Stan, to their parents, to their friends... fuck, HOW will he even tell them, through their dreams?_

_"Dipper!"_

_He isn't going to think about how Mabel will look without life in her weird cage of blood and bone. Mabel has always been so full of life, he doesn't think it's possible for him to imagine. Yet another reason not to open his eyes._

_"Dipper, leggo me fore your death grip kills me again!"_

_..._

_"Mabel."_

_"I'm trying to sleep," she mumbles, pulling the paw print pattern blanket up to cover her head, and his concern only deepens. She hasn't wanted to do much of anything except sleep for nearly a week now, as though despite being healed her body were still going through a period of recovery. Only... he hasn't been able to detect anything abnormal about her physiology that would justify the lethargy. Maybe it's a common side effect of being brought back from the brink and/or trading one's soul away, he wouldn't know. She has to perk up sometime, right? That's generally what she does. (Waddles was an edge case.)_

_But then. The physical consequences are hardly chiefest of his worries._

_It's barely noticeable, really. In fact, he's sure if he and his sister weren't so close, nigh inseparable for years, he would never have noticed it. But there isn't any getting around the simple fact that it exists now where mere days before it had not._

_There's a slight grey tinge to the colors at the furthest fringes of her aura, like some sort of surrounding outline. No matter what color the rest of her aura becomes, the edge stubbornly remains. No matter how her aura moves, whether it's bursting with excitement or diminishing with exhaustion_ <as it has been lately> _, the border is always there, as if containing it._

 _He can't say what it means_ <though he imagines no shortage of terrifying implications <most of them utterly nonsensical <his brain tossing around words like "soul-sickness" <for seemingly no other reason than to torment him with the fact that he doesn't know <something this important and he doesn't know what could happen> <something this important and all he can do is wait and see>>>>> _, but he knows what it is._

_His fault._

 

 _He enters. There's no fanfare to it anymore; it's practically as mundane as opening a door_ <she always leaves unlocked for him <not that he requires permission <"It's just manners, you know?">>> _. She leaves his appearance untouched_ <if he were asked <and he will not be> he would not be able to pinpoint exactly when she'd started to do that <anymore than he can recall the moment he'd begun to view his younger self's form as the more embarrassing one <"What, afraid your clients wouldn't take you seriously anymore if you showed up looking like somebody stole your lunch money?">>> _._

<many things about the two of them they had once accepted as constants no longer are <Mabel doesn't take the stairs two at a time anymore <he can still remember the way her ten year old self would pull on their mother's arm <"Why do you guys always walk, running is so much FASTER!">>> <though she remains skeptical of the concept of an indoor voice <<in recent years> <increasingly> she has begun to trade in a few exclamation points for periods here and there>>>

 _As for how he feels about his appearance? Well. It's really only human that it no longer bothers him, isn't it?_ <humans can get used to anything <adaptation is their strong suit>> _(Pun intended?_  <of course not> _)_

 _He has made one sweeping alteration rather recently_ <a week ago> _: he's set his form to mimic Mabel's in apparent age. Something flicked on in his head that night he encased himself in shadow, as though it'd revealed to him a muscle he'd never flexed before. He'd been nervous at first at the prospect of testing it; he's heard of shifters' madness, Knows_ <more than most> _how easy it could be to forget what you once were. But curiosity had won out, as it nearly always does with him, and he made the discovery that his shapeshifting feels almost elastic, in a way. All he has to do is let go and his shape returns to baseline, that eternal kid at his core. It's almost scary how easy and intuitive it's turned out to be, after years of struggling to learn._

 _It takes some searching to find her among the horde of sedentary sheep surrounding the coffee table, basking in the radiant sunshine of a perfect lazy day, but at last there she is, nestled in the tall grass between Acathexis and Cathexis, taking large bites out of a floral cupcake_ <taking ownership of her soul allowed him to simulate the ability to taste sugar she'd given up <"You basically just saved my life twice, you know that?">> _while absently rubbing Melancholy's chin where they've rested their head on her chest. She doesn't say anything when she sees him, and it certainly isn't the cupcake keeping her silent_ <she talks with her mouth full all the time> _._

 _"Been a while since you've thrown a tea party," Dipper Pines says simply_ <it's all he needs to say> _, and she swallows audibly._

 _"Not now," Mabel Pines says_ <<even here in her dream> she looks exhausted> _, reaching up to pull him into the woolpile with her. "Bring it in, bro."_

_As he settles in beside her, she continues, "You know, I've been thinking about how Diane told us the Fourteenth would come early, but not that it was gonna be your being there that triggered the ghosts to wake up so soon."_

_So it's back to Diane today. They haven't used that name in a while. "Yeah?"_

_"And I've decided."_

_"Decided what?"_

_"I'm not gonna swear off playing Twenty Questions with her after all. I think ultimately she helped us do our job, even if she was really shady about it."_

_"I'm glad we've cleared up the pressing question of whether or not to shun a narrative abstraction that likely doesn't care about us or our problems."_

_"Is narrative abstraction the new definition you're sticking with?"_

_"For now. Don't quote me on it."_

_"I like it. It's vague and unhelpful, just like she is ninety percent of the time."_

_Dipper props himself up on an elbow. "I did come here for a reason, you know. We got mail today."_

_Mabel frowns. "Do we have to read it now? I'm kinda tired."_

_"You can't be tired while you're asleep."_

_"This is my dream, Dippy-Q, you don't get to come in here and tell me what I can't do slash be."_

_"Come on, I know how highly you think of the Postal Service."_

_"Well..." she mumbles into Melancholy's fur, "I suppose it_ is _the bedrock of freedom and democracy..."_

_"Feeling up to honoring their sacred commitment to the people?"_

_"Fine, okay, yeah," she relents, finally sitting up. She pauses to rub at her eyes. She's been doing that a lot lately, even here in her dreams, but there's nothing wrong with them that he can tell. When he asked her about it, she'd given him non-answers_ <"I dunno bro, it's like I'm seeing double but also not 'cause it's still just me. Makes me dizzy."> <"You know that feeling when you put on a brand new pair of glasses and have to readjust? It's like that." <"Mabel, you don't wear glasses." <"Oh yeah.">>> _._

 _He produces the plain envelope from the ether and hands it over. Mabel squints at the names above the return address_ <Eugene, Oregon> _before tearing off the top in one strip and holding the pouch upside down to shake out the contents. Dozens of photos spill out; most of skyfish, some of a big open field covered in the maggot-infested carcasses of corvids and bats, nearly all of them written on or drawn over in places. Two photos stand out among the others: one of a pair of familiar kids planting bulbs in the park, another of the same kids, one standing on the shoulders of the other as they reach for an ugly purple cat stuck in a tree._

 _Mabel picks out a piece of notebook paper from the mess of photos and unfolds it. She smiles and passes it to Dipper, pointing at a few lines in particular_ <written in fat black marker> <the handwriting is atrocious> _:_

**... and we hope that, one day, we'll be as awesome as you guys and get to travel around the country solving mysteries!**

**For now though we'll stick to what we can do around here.**

**Maybe we'll visit when we get off punishment in fifteen years!**

_"We did it, Dipper. We're officially famous."_

 

****2** **m/ 1 w/ 1 d/ 21 h****

"She slowly... opens the door. And there on the doorstep... is Simon."

"Oh no..." Henry murmurs. "Oh, no no no, you can't do this..."

"Simon, he says, 'Cindy, I thought you were dead. I was so scared I was the last one...'"

"It isn't him anymore, Cindy, run!" Dipper urges.

"And Cindy, well, she can't believe it. Doesn't wanna hope it could be true, you know? But she hugs him right then and there. She's crying of course, I mean _waterworks_."

"And he squeezes her tight right back." Mabel hugs her arms round herself and lowers her voice. "And he leans in close. Reeeeeeeal close." She leans forward and the boys across from her do as well. "And he whispers, 'And then there were NONE.' BAM, the end!" She throws on another packet of creamer, punctuating the story with a burst of flame.

"Aw man, see, I knew it," Dipper says, collapsing back to lean on his hands, tension melting out of his shoulders. "She should have waited for the sun to rise first."

"Well, she didn't want to risk leaving him alone to the ghost," Henry says.

"I mean _I guess_ , but still."

"Aaaaaaand?" Mabel prompts with a wide smile. "What's the verdict?"

"Clearly better than mine, have to admit," Dipper says as Mabel sits down again. "Though I have to say, if I were the monster, I wouldn't have announced my approach with the sound of banging doors and wind, it's too spectacle, you know? Came off amateurish. You've got to go for subtlety, I'm talking soft, repeating nonsense noises or intermittent clicking or even footsteps because the key is to get the humans thinking they could have imagined it, get them straining to hear the sound above their frightened breathing, to confirm its existence to themselves, to locate its position in the house. Then, when they've got their eyes glued to their bedroom door wondering if that scratching sound is the cat they're sure they let in the room earlier, you pop outta the wall above their bed or something. Maximum screams right there. And, and! If you want to build up the fear first, you can stop making the noise and let them sit there in the dark waiting for it to come back, because there's no way they're going back to sleep, but they can't get up to get the light either you know, the sound is so soft their movement might mask it _—_ "

Mabel snaps her fingers. "I've got it."

"Got what?" Dipper asks, realizing now she probably hadn't been listening anyway and it wasn't worth making a fuss over being interrupted.

"You have to lamby dance in front of Henry."

"Why?"

"You lost the bet."

"We didn't bet anything on this."

She waves this off. "It was implied."

Dipper turns to Henry, who is looking a little lost. "Henry, do you want to see me dance?"

"Um." Henry looks between Mabel and Dipper. He makes a so-so gesture.

"Fine, I'll do it later."

Mabel narrows her eyes. "You think you're sneaky, huh? You're just waiting for me to forget."

"No, I'd do it now. That stuff's kiddie level, you don't know real embarrassment. We just have to finish the ghost stories for the spell to work. Henry?"

Henry just stares into the fire, flickers of bright light reflecting off his glasses. “I don’t really have any ghost stories to tell.”

“Relax dude, no one’s gonna go squealing to your crazy parents that you’re practicing witchcraft. Our cult’s lips are zipped," Mabel promises, miming the action. She then starts making indistinct noises as though as proof of concept, gesturing toward her sealed mouth.

Henry goes very still. “When you said Wendy's told you guys a lot about me... what sort of things did she mention?”

“She hasn't told us anything about you,” Dipper answers, thinking fast. “I lied. So if we know something we shouldn't, please don’t be mad at her.”

“Then how do you guys know my parents?” Henry asks, still in that awfully flat tone.

“It’s in Dipper’s nerd book under your entry,” Mabel explains, unzipping her lips into a puzzled frown. Dipper mentally smacks himself. _Of course_ she’d read that one. “Wait, so you didn’t tell him all that stuff about like, running away?”

Henry stands now, rounding on Dipper. “Okay dude, I'm serious. I'm not upset that you guys know about that, but I need to know how you found out.”

Dipper shows him his hands. “It was just the only theory that made sense, okay? I couldn’t believe Arnold and Rita would let you stay here for a summer; they don’t like Dan and his, so —”

“How do you know their names then? That’s no lucky guess.”

“I know lots of things like that.”

Henry lets out a deep breath. “Because you’re a demon, right?”

Dipper nods.

Henry gives him a helpless look. “So you keep saying, but like... just tell me, is any of that for real? Or is it a game? I'm getting mixed messages here.”

Dipper and Mabel exchange a sideways glance. For him, it _is_ real; for her, it _is_ a game. So the question emerges: how to get their story straight?

"Yeah, he's a demon all right," Mabel says, almost immediately. "Guess we're found out, huh?"

"I can show you something, if that'll help prove it to you," Dipper adds, stacking three marshmallows on the end of his stick. Rather than roasting them over the fire, he sticks them directly into the heart of it, lighting the sweets.

“No wait, don’t —!” Henry starts, reaching to stop him, but Dipper is already stuffing the entire end of the stick into his mouth, flames and all. He chews and slides it back out, no marshmallows left, twirling the stick in his fingers with a smile.

“That’s pretty convincing,” Mabel admits.

“You should see your face!" Dipper practically cackles at Henry's reaction. "I told you, didn’t I? It isn’t going to burn me. Don’t even need my powers to handle that much.”

Henry sits back on his log with a sigh, quiet a moment. “Okay then, that's all I needed…” he says finally, staring into the crackling fire. “That and... well, about me hiding out here... You guys won’t tell anyone, will you? That's the thing I'm concerned about here, being found out. Not just for me, but Uncle Dan and them would be in a whole lot of trouble for this, you know?”

“We won't, dude, you can trust us," Dipper says, putting a fist to his chest.

“Yeah, we got your back, same as the tiger I gave you!” Mabel assures him. "MYS-TERY. CULT! MYS-TERY. CULT! MYS-TERY —"

“All right, I believe you,” Henry says with a smile, which promptly fades a bit at the edges. “I guess... maybe I do have a ghost story for you guys, I dunno. It's... sort of been on my mind, but..."

When he doesn't say anything else for a while, Mabel pipes up. "You don't have to if you don't want to, Hen. I could tell another one instead, I'm full of 'em!"

“No, no, it's alright, uh... so um… I ran away from home about a month and a half ago…” Henry begins, and as he continues Dipper can’t shake the feeling he’s heard this one before.

 

_“When I was… I wanna say thirteen, fourteen maybe? I ran away for the first time. And the only time, til I left for good that is._

_I’m not sure if running away’s the right way to put it actually, I didn’t sneak away in the night or literally run. One moment he had me against the wall for… I don’t remember the reason, don’t remember much of it at all to be honest. Except the feeling. He’d never choked me before, that was new. I hadn’t learned how I was supposed to deal with it. I think I put up a struggle, not because I was trying to get him off you see but because I needed to get him off, I needed to breathe, and my body fought for me. And I was bigger then, just starting to realize one day I might be too big for him. That pissed him off._

_Anyway, he couldn’t keep hold so he stopped, starting yelling instead, about “our roof”, “our food”, “our money”, “our time”. Ours ours ours. Which is to say, in sum I think, I wasn’t mine, wouldn’t ever be mine so long as I live._

_And I’d heard this before of course, but this time was different. Pain could come and go, I knew, but choking… it hit me then hard that there were no limits, that they could kill me on a whim if they really wanted, that it would be within their “rights” as my parents to put me down. That the fault of it would lie with me._

_So this time I had a thought, I did, and it must have come out because then he was saying, “Fine, go on, see how far you get.”_

_So I did go on. Just… walked out… while they leered at me through the windows and waited._

_I managed to keep them waiting five whole days too, sleeping on a bench in the high school’s locker room. But they were right. I didn’t have anywhere else, didn’t have anyone else, so then I went back. And whoo boy (laughs), was it hell to tell the captain. Dad actually had to call in help from some buddies of his because he started getting tired well before he was finished. Couldn’t sit down for a week…”_

 

“… so I walk out right and get about to the end of the road when these storm clouds start coming in fast. Too fast. It went from a slight drizzle to pouring within a minute, I swear. And I’m thinking, ‘That’s it, I’m screwed. I’m going to have to turn, walk back, and apologize.’ And there was no way I could do that, not twenty minutes after I walked out, could you even imagine what they’d have to say then?

So while I’m freezing up on what to do, this minivan pulls over next to me. Now I’m thinking they’ve called someone, sent someone after me, so I start running, but it just keeps pace with me along the shoulder. Then the window rolls down and the driver, she says, ‘You need some help?’

And I’m about to say ‘I’m fine’, the way I always say ‘I’m fine’ no matter how obvious it is I’m not, like some sort of terrible reflex. But I don’t say that. I don’t know why I don’t, it was right there on the tip of my tongue. Maybe it’s just that this lady, she’s got this voice and it’s so kind and I’m so cold. But I say ‘yes, please’ and the passenger door opens, I guess it’s one of those automatics, and I get in.

She asks me if she can give me a ride home and my teeth are chattering, I got soaked through so quickly, but immediately I tell her the truth. I know how this sounds, first I get into a stranger’s car then I let her know I’ve run away? But it felt like a good idea at the time. Or maybe it’s that just when I felt things couldn’t possibly get worse, this person did me a kindness and… there was something… meaningful about that, I guess you could say. Like someone out there was looking out for me.

So she asks if there’s anywhere I’d like her to take me, anywhere I could be safe, and I’m shocked. Maybe it’s that I was so shocked I didn’t think it through, but then I’m telling her I’ve got this cousin in Gravity Falls. And she takes me here. I try to take it back of course, I can’t ask her to do all this for me, and all this trouble just because I won’t go back and face my punishment, which is surely gonna come eventually sooner or later. But she laughs it off, keeps telling me it’s no big deal even when it so obviously is.”

Henry lets out a long sigh. He’s sitting with his legs up to his chest now, arms folded over his knees. “And now? Well. We’ll just have to see, huh? I’m up at the Shack with Wendy most of the time, so if they do come checking around Uncle Dan’s they might not catch me there. But I can’t hide forever, you know? I haven’t brought any of my things with me and school will be starting back up in the fall… I just…”

“It’s okay, dude,” Mabel says gently, sliding over to him to put a hand on his arm. “I mean, it’s not okay, like at all. If ‘okay’ were the color blue, that’d be like a nasty salmon orange. But you don’t have to talk about it anymore if you don’t want.”

“Just one thing. The woman who helped you,” Dipper says slowly. “What was her name?”

A shadow of guilt falls over Henry’s countenance. “I don’t know. I feel awful about it, but somehow I never thought to ask. I don’t even think I gave her my own name. She was pretty talkative the whole trip and didn’t make me feel like I needed to say anything or like I owed her anything. And then, and this is the spooky part right, when she drops me off, she has me run up to the door and knock to see if anyone is home. Only about thirty feet, so even though it's still raining hard even here, like the raincloud's been following us the whole way, I'm there in a flash.

I knock, I turn around. And she's gone. Just... poof. The car and everything. Without a sound, without a trace. The door's opening behind me, but all I can think is that the only thing I had time to say before she disappeared was ‘thank you’.”


	4. Misattribution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Misattribution** \- Attributing a recollection or idea to the wrong source.

_"If we can’t embrace uncertainty do we miss the point of love?"_

- Mark Z. Danielewski

 

******2-** **1-4-18******

In the way of most good things, Dipper Pines doesn't notice the darkness until it's been cruelly snatched away without warning. His eyes water instantly as he sits up in bed and flails for a pillow he can use to shield himself from the harsh light's assault.

"Oh, I'm sorry," says the rogue responsible, switching the light back off. "Is it supposed to be dark in here?"

Mabel Pines sticks her head out of the elaborate blanket fort commandeering most of the bedroom's space, multicolored light from within spilling out around her like a wonky halo. "Yeah. Come in, come in! You're late!"

"Sorry. This thing is so dense, I didn't know where to start... Didn't help that half of it's written in some sort of code or shorthand." Henry carefully steps around discarded playthings and other mess, then gets down on his knees and crawls inside. Even then, he's too tall to fit comfortably without hunching over. "This is the situation room I take it?"

"Yes! Speaking of, did you bring a blanket? I still need to patch up the back, but I ran out."

Dipper doesn't follow the rest of their conversation; he's finally blinked away enough of the spots in his vision to go back to staring at his wall of evidence through the plastic of his labyrinth pen (Mabel had won it for him at a ring toss game at the fair ("I know how fast you burn through pens, but look! Instead of chewing this one while you're thinking, you can play with it! Neat, right?")). As he twists and tilts the utensil, guiding the tiny pair of steel balls inside toward their respective destinations (it's more difficult to do than he first expected), he tries to make sense of what's in front of him. What's in front of him would look to an observer much like a large cork board covered in index cards, photographs, and clippings, pinned up with thumbtacks and connected by lengths of string. To Dipper, it just looks wrong.

He'd tried replacing the central card and rearranging the strings accordingly. Then he'd tried it again. And again. The balls in the pen have begun to skip past openings, slide too fast to maneuver properly through the maze. He's getting sloppy. He's getting frustrated.

Calm down. Remember: he's got nothing but time. Forget the occasional jackhammering in his chest and those thoughts telling him to hurry hurry hurry. Apropos of nothing. They aren't even _good_ lies. Remember: if he lets this get to him, they win. Whoever they are. Might be no one. Might be. Remember: panicking won't help. Won't do anything but make his hands too shaky to hold his sweet new pen. Yeah.

Then he's being yanked backward out of bed with a yelp, through the window of the blanket fort and onto a stack of pillows inside it.

"Hell-o!" Mabel shouts.

"Surprise," Henry says.

 "Wha, what's going on?" Dipper grunts, disoriented.

"An intervention!"

"We're holding a meeting."

Dipper starts to climb back out, but Mabel pulls him back, overpowering him easily (he blames the sleep deprivation). "No you don't!" she sing-songs. "We made a break in the case and you need to hear it, buster."

Dipper reluctantly allows himself to be given a blanket to tie around himself like a cape and a bowl of popcorn (with NmNs mixed in) to chew on. He settles in comfortably between two of the colorful lamps Mabel made by filling mason jars with glow stick fluid and glitter. "Alright, hit me I guess." When Henry unzips his satchel to pull out the journal and begin flicking through pages, Dipper scowls (he isn't in the greatest of moods today, okay?). "Is nothing sacred?"

"You're a demon," Henry says, shutting the overstuffed book nonetheless.

Mabel lifts Wobbles, who Dipper can now see is wearing a pair of angry eyebrows fashioned from electrical tape, onto her lap and does her best to cross his tiny forelegs in disapproval. "Henry's part of the Mystery Cult—"

"Yeah, don't call it that."

"He passed the test to prove it and everything."

Henry props the journal up on his lap, its cover facing Dipper. "You know I don't think you're crazy, Dipper. Nothing I have seen nor will see in here"—he taps the spine—"is going to change that. Okay?"

Dipper believes him. Or rather, Dipper believes that Henry believes that Dipper sincerely believes that he is a demon. Which isn't the same thing as Henry believing that Dipper is a demon. Or disbelieving, for that matter. Which is all perfectly fine. Dipper hadn't expected that of him, of either of them. It isn't necessary.

No, Dipper hesitates only because he isn't sure whether all the information he's recorded in the journal is safe to share. Whether some of it won't negatively impact the timeline here or even just cause concern for Henry to read (it's par for the course for Mabel, when she's interested enough to read parts through anyway).

"Okay." Dipper waves him on. "By all means."

Henry opens the journal once again, turning to where the journal itself ends and the extra pages of notes and scribbles begin. He folds his hands neatly atop the paper and looks up at Dipper. "Mabel and Stan were telling us about how you haven't come out of your room for nearly three days now."

"That's an exaggeration," Dipper says as he tries to remember how many times it's gotten dark while he was staring at the board. Failing that, he tries to recall whether three days was really all that much time. The way Henry had said it, it sounded like it.

"You're stuck, right? Did th-ack!" Mabel nearly chokes on her popcorn talking with her mouth full and has to take a few swigs of Mabel Juice from a canteen while Henry pats her back before she's able to continue. "Did that whole ritual thing we did not give you what you needed?"

"Wellll..." Dipper parts the rear flannel blanket to retrieve his flashlight from a dresser drawer, then clicks it on and directs the beam through the fort window at his board. "You see that burnt scrap, bottom-left?"

"Yeah." It sticks out somewhat, possessing the only thumbtack without any string.

"That's all that survived when we tossed the maps into the bonfire." Dipper and Mabel had made out of the Gravity Falls Museum of History with an armload of Sanborn maps each, which they'd run through Stan's copier a few days before they'd performed their ritual in the forest ("Why these particular maps?" ("The town of Gravity Falls isn't found on any others. Besides, it's always a good idea to appeal to the universe's sense of humor when designing a spell.")) "The location corresponds to—wait for it—thereabouts of 618 Gopher Road." Dipper clicks the flashlight off, turning to Henry. "Mabel and I all but literally turned the Shack upside down looking for signs of a portal. It's not here. So either my assumption was wrong and there is no magical phenomenon happening here or there is and it _is_ here at the Shack, but it's not a portal to another dimension."

Mabel cups a hand around one ear and tilts her head toward Wobbles, who is clearly otherwise preoccupied with snuffling longingly at Mabel's popcorn bowl just out of his reach. "What's that? Hmm, yes, I see." She puts her hand back down and raises her voice. "Guys, Wobbles wants to know if we've considered whether the portal could be invisible."

"No," Dipper says firmly, making sure to stare straight at Wobbles. The pig puts his head to one side, no doubt confused as to what he's doing that Dipper thinks he shouldn't be. "Crossing dimensions is a pretty big event. An active portal would be colorful, noticeable, and likely noisy."

Henry leans forward, pushing his glasses up his nose. "And you got to this point following which theory?"

"Alternate Universe Theory. It just made the most sense." Dipper briefly shines the flashlight on the board again for their perusal. "For example, it explains why my powers are gone. If I were to cross over from my world to a world in which demons cannot exist, like this one, my form would be forced to appear as that of an ordinary human for the duration of that visit. It explains the why too. Someone here must have summoned me and I had to come in person in order to fulfill their request. The likely culprit being your Dipper, since he's vanished. The terms of whatever deal we made may have had to involve the loss of my memory of making such a deal, in which case I trust I knew what I was doing." 

It sounds even worse aloud. Too many assumptions. If he could just get his hands on another piece of solid evidence, something to point him in the right direction... "Anyway, that's where I'm at. What've you guys figured out?"

Henry exchanges a glance with Mabel, then taps the open journal page. "What if all this doesn't quite fit together because you've been working with the wrong theory?"

Dipper squints, but can't force his bleary eyes to focus enough to make out the header. He's been sure to feed this body something green once a week and keep hydrated with a steady supply of Mabel's Drink of the Dead concoction. This is how his diligence has been repaid. Unfair. "I already eliminated all of the other options. There aren't any other viable theories left at this point, dude."

"Well, we think you may have missed one," Henry says, holding up the journal for Dipper to see more clearly. "Look, it says here that powerful demons have the ability to create these pocket dimensions of their own in which to reside, right? Dimensions which follow rules of their personal design." Mabel holds something up too, an etch-a-sketch drawing of a little planet floating within a cube while a pair of asymmetrical disembodied eyes hover threateningly overhead. The whole thing is capped by the words "ARTIST'S RENDITION" in messy, tangled lettering.

"... Uh, Henry."

"It also says that entry and exit into them is controlled by the will of the demon, which would explain why you can't find any portal—the entrance _is_ here, it's just been closed off." Mabel leans the etch-a-sketch against a nodding Wobbles and parts the fort walls to retrieve a sheet of cardboard. To the cardboard has been glued an outward-radiating pattern of macaroni (indicated by arrows of permanent marker to be a portal), over which a large red 'X' and the words "NOPE" have been painted. "Notably, the dimensions' features are built most easily from memory, so maybe this other demon is borrowing yours to create its world from and maybe that tampering is why you can't remember getting here? We're still shaky on that part." Mabel flips the cardboard over in one smooth, practiced motion (shedding some glitter in the process) to reveal a whimsical drawing of Dipper's head with the top opened like a lid, out of which a swirling bunch of puzzle pieces are flying. Half of the missing pieces are in the process of forming a planet not unlike the one from earlier.

"Henry."

"The demon in control of the place would be able to restrict your powers, so that covers why you're human. Importantly, it explains why the remnants of magic present here work the same as in your world—it's a pocket dimension _within_ that world, but removed. This is in contrast with your current assumption that this magic is leaking through an unchecked gateway between—"

"HENRY."

Henry quiets, lowering the journal back to his lap. Mabel grudgingly follows his example and sets down the enlarged percepshroom she'd made out of Playdough (complete with googly eyes (Mabel would probably argue nothing was really complete without googly eyes)). Dipper's voice when he speaks again is softer; he hadn't meant to snap at his brother like that. He's tired, he's tired of _being_ tired, but that isn't their fault. "Sorry to cut you off, man, I know I asked and all, but... Listen, I can see how you guys came up with what you did, but Demon World Theory isn't actually viable."

Mabel momentarily pauses shoveling more popcorn into her mouth. "Why not? It hasn't been crossed out."

Dipper manages to delay answering for a few seconds by shifting his weight, but finds that no matter the sitting posture he feels just as uncomfortable. "Well. The thing you need to understand about that is... it was never a real contender in the first place. I wrote that entry because... how to explain..." He chews his lip for several more seconds, struggling to get his underclocked brain in gear ("mind hamsters" Mabel had called it sometimes, usually on her bad days ("It's like I can't get these lazy mind hamsters going for the life of me. Once those suckers decide to start running though, trust me, the wheels just won't stop.")). Over the years he'd grown used to being ambushed for answers at any given moment, it was practically part of his job description, but then he hadn't been burdened by things like elevated adenosine levels. "See, my unwanted thought disposal mechanism is kinda... busted. So sometimes when I can't stop thinking about something, I try and sort of... dispose of it manually. I get the thought out on paper like so." He gestures at the journal, at the open page. "And then once it's all written out neatly like that, I can see why it's so stupid and ridiculous and not worth getting hung up on, which makes it easier to put behind me. Sometimes that doesn't really work, sometimes it'll come back, but I can always read what I wrote over again. Does that make sense?"

Henry tentatively nods; Dipper figures that he's actually unsure, but wants to be supportive. Mabel's popcorn consumption meanwhile has slowed to a guilty crawl as she stares pointedly down at her toes, which are wriggling nervously. "... 'm sorry," she says. When Dipper throws a questioning look her way, she swallows. "I've been giving you a hard time lately, about your journaling I mean. I was just messing around, y'know? I hope I wasn't twisting a knife or anything..."

"I know. Don't worry about it, we're cool."

"So you wrote that theory expecting it to be disproven at some point," Henry clarifies.

"Yeah and that... kind of backfired, but here's the details you guys don't have: No demon I've met is powerful enough to exile me someplace I don't wanna be. No demon I know would even be interested. The point of these pocket dimensions is to have a space of your own to retreat to and exist within when you're not on the material plane. Nobody's gonna want to give up their personal refuge to imprison me and waste the energy to keep me there; if they hated me that much, they'd just destroy me. Besides, not to sound my own sousaphone here, but no other demon would dare to cross _me_ of all beings..."

Just stop now. Just stop here. Just stop talking.

"Except one," Dipper says, internally berating himself for never having learned when to cut his losses and shut up. "Just one who might be crazy enough to do it. And who would know enough about where I came from to pull it off. But he's dead. I like to think he might have the basic decency to stay dead."

"So a dead guy trapped you here?" Mabel says. "That's the theory, like in a nutshell?"

"I know how it sounds, but if you'd met him, you'd know," Dipper says, and the weary sadness underscoring his seriousness nips whatever harmless joke Mabel was going to make to lighten the mood in the bud. "He never was one for decency."

"Is there any way we could test this theory?" Henry prompts with a glance out the fort window at Dipper's board. "Even if it's a long shot, staying cooped up in here isn't going to make the alternative suddenly start making sense. So maybe we can shift our focus toward tying up this loose end? Just until you work things out."

"Sounds... reasonable enough," Dipper says, and Henry and Mabel give one another a not-so-subtle low-five behind their backs. "There is... one way to tell for sure. I'd have to experience something new."

"Like learn how to tap dance?" Mabel says, raising a drowsy Wobbles up to give a short demonstration.

"Not exactly. Something I've never seen, felt, tasted, touched, or smelled would do it. Something I don't already Know, basically. If someone _has_ constructed this place from my memories and done it _correctly_ , it shouldn't be possible for me to encounter anything like that. And if it's been done incorrectly, well, the whole thing falls apart like a hastily glued together tower of popsicle sticks."

 

`Houston, we may have several problems.`

`<it is but a hastening of the inevitable>`

 

"Considering all the inconsistencies between this summer and the one I originally lived through, it's doubtful they could properly account for the consequences of _all_  of those differences." Dipper dials back his rapid-fire speculation by faking a cough. "Er, hypothetically, I mean."

It doesn't accomplish anything; a wide smile is already plastered across Mabel's face. "Too late, bro, I see you totally getting into this. Just admit it, me n' Henry've got this investigation's number in the bag."

Dipper fishes up a handful of popcorn from his bowl. "We'll see."

 

  **.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_“Is it time yet?”_

_“No.”_

_“Is it time yet?”_

_“No.”_

_“Is it time yet?”_

_“No. Look, how about I just tell you when it_ is _time?”_

_“Is it time yet?”_

<yes>

_Dipper frowns at his own answer, puzzled. They hadn’t seen anyone enter the shop just now, how could it be time? Mabel, who has been vibrating impatiently beside him, lets out a small squeak of excitement and pats the space beside her on the bench. Then she frowns as well._

_“Uh oh.”_

_“What is it?”_

_“I forgot my head. Think we should go back for it?”_

_She’d probably left the head of Phillip the Flying Squirrel_ <Northern Oregon University’s mascot> <”Dipper. DIPPER. Are you seeing this? Are you _hearing_ this? I am a literal superhero! This job is! The most fun! I’ve ever had! IN MY LIFE‼”  <”It’s so hot in here, how do you stand it? Between this costume and the sweaters, there’s gotta be something wrong with you.”>> _in the car about a block away, where Soos is sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine running (partly because they don’t know exactly how much danger they’ll be dealing with, but primarily because they hadn’t paid for parking_ <”If you hear sirens, that’s the signal to come pick us up.”> _)._

_Dipper rolls his eyes. He’d_ told _her this would happen, but had she listened? No. “Let’s just go. Resist the urge to wave at any cameras. Worst case scenario, we have to kill them or whatever.”_

_Together they cross the busy one way street to the shop they’ve targeted, Mabel fighting through her mounting anticipation at every step in order to keep her practiced, easy stride_. _Unlike the coffee shops and tourist traps surrounding it, this building is unbothered by the mid-morning crowd, granting the pair unchallenged access to the doorstep._

_Above the tall white door, the words_ Antediluvian Antiques _. In the_ <darkened <they’re closed on Mondays≫ _window to the left of the door, a leisurely revolving sign._ We Buy Junk _, it reads._ We Sell Antiques _, it reads twenty four seconds later. On the window to the right, a notice:_ Unattended children will be given sugar cookies and espresso _. Dipper instantly dislikes this place._

_“I already like this place,” Mabel announces decisively._

_“You do remember what we’re here for, don’t you?”_

_She shrugs. “Not like the building did anything wrong.”_

_The door feels deceptively solid beneath his ethereal hand as Dipper gets a feel for the strength of the wards set into it. He holds up three fingers to Mabel, who retrieves a silver badge from her back pocket._ AUXILIARY POLICE SEATTLE _it reads beneath the figure of an eagle. Mabel squares her shoulders and holds it out as if presenting it to the door for evaluation. The badge doesn’t belong to them, but the door doesn’t need to know that._

_Dipper clears his throat. “Even when lacking probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, police may conduct a warrantless search of the premises if the premises contains one of the following: persons in imminent danger of death or harm; information that will disclose the location of the aforementioned…”_

_“What are you looking at?” Mabel asks over her shoulder of a kid who has stopped to stare at them_ <her> _. She sticks her tongue out at him. He sticks his tongue out back. It takes Dipper not insignificant willpower to keep speaking solemnly. The kid walks off, disappearing into a nearby convenience store._

_“The emergency, or community caretaking exception, must be motivated by the need to render assistance and may not be used as pretext for conducting an evidentiary search. The officer must—"_

_A click sounds as Mabel turns the doorknob with her free hand_ <on impulse> _. “Oh hey, look at that. Dipper, it’s open.”_

_Dipper lets his counter spell trail off, eyes widening as he takes in the sparking remains of three layers of wards, all of which appeared to suffer the same critical failure upon his sister’s action. “That’s… odd. I definitely wasn’t finished.”_

_Mabel smirks. “Maybe you bored the lock into submission.”_

_“Or… maybe it was never locked,” Dipper whispers_ <unnecessarily> _, golden gaze raking through the portions of shadowy interior revealed by the windows for anything obvious about this place he may have missed. If he weren’t intangible, he’d swear he’d just felt a shiver crawl down his spine. “Maybe… we’ve been expected.”_

_Dipper steps into Mabel. He’s learned there’s no not rude way to do this; taking control always feels self-consciously like he’s shoving her out of the way, even though he can sense no discomfort of the sort from her. The moment he steps through the entryway, shutting the door behind him, he gets the all-too-familiar sense of having walked directly into a spotlight. They hadn’t gotten_ that _lucky._

_Dipper takes off sprinting through the first open pathway he sees between worm eaten bureaus and grandfather clocks, swerving right at a cylindrical glass cabinet packed with dusty Chinese lacquerware, hitting a dead end at a wall covered in still life oil paintings_ <and all this rushing around in response to a comparatively unhurried <inaudible> countdown> _. He doubles back_ <62 seconds> _. Past the piles of suzani pillows from Uzbekistan_ <49 seconds> <he briefly feels himself slow <”We can check them out later, Mabel!”≫ _. Around the reproductions of 16 th century Italian globes _<36 seconds> _. Over the collection of 17 th century brass candlesticks _<29 seconds> _. And slides to a halt_ <14 seconds> _by the rear door tucked into a corner behind an array of gaudy lamps. He reaches up to a small white control box on the wall beside the door to punch the first four digits that come to mind into the keypad_ <0642> _._

_“DISARMED. READY TO ARM,” says a familiar, static voice. Dipper breathes out, slowly ceding ground back to Mabel; enough for his to become hers once again, but not enough to be expelled._

_Mabel gives the box a pat, grinning lopsidedly. “Remember when you weren’t as magic and we had to pop these open like savages?” There’s no real purpose to her asking aloud while they’re sharing the body, but they’ve both always been fond of talking to themselves._

It's hard to forget given that half the time that didn't work and we tripped the tamper.

_“How aren’t the two of us master criminals by now?”_

You think we’re not? I don't know about master, but this feels fairly criminal.

_“I suppose. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing I’d want word getting out about.”_

If only we'd brought something that could protect your privacy...

_“I get it, you were right, could'ya not do a whole thing right now?” Mabel opens the door, placed only just far enough away from all the clutter to avoid banging into anything valuable, to reveal the dark, claustrophobic stairwell beyond. She steps in, lowering her head to avoid the low ceiling and quietly closing the door behind her_ <in ordinary circumstances Mabel would need a flashlight to find her way down these stairs <it would be evident to most from the unhealthy yellow tinge to her eyes that these are not ordinary circumstances>> _. “Guess our guy is down here, huh?” she whispers._

Eeeyep.

_“Then let’s do this.”_

_…_

<this creature has spent many a night in its time mulling over the hypothetical circumstances of its ultimate demise <the demon can empathize> but it had always imagined the angel of death would be taller>

<and <for that matter> that he’d be cloaked in tattered black robes <not some puffy vest peppered with buttons <"gnyaftzgo luh jo mylt”> <"I Give Free Hugs"> <"save a vampire / give blood" <this last one does win a few points with it>>>>

<it was fully prepared for someone serious <someone grave > <not grinning>>

<and <as crumbs continue to litter the floorboards it has kept so well-swept to deter the mice> it ponders how much more thematically appropriate it would be for death to have a ravenous lust for blood <rather than sugar cookies>>

_“I won’t lie. These are some pre-tty good cookies you've got here, Baron,” she says, returning the emptied jar to the credenza and brushing crumbs from her lips with the back of a hand, "but they’re not what I’m here for.”_

_“Whatever you’re here for, you can come in for it tomorrow,” says Baron gruffly_ <fear remarkably well disguised <but the demon can sense it lurking there nonetheless <indigo impatience masking a telltale nugget of amber>>> _, glaring at her over the rims of his reading glasses. While he’s paused for the moment and gingerly set aside the dolls he’d been repairing when they walked in, he hasn’t bothered to stand up from his place at the work bench. The basement ceiling does seem rather low for such a large man to be comfortable standing. The room itself is fairly cramped as well, most of the space being occupied by half-opened drawers, too full to be closed, and shelves laden with thick volumes and miscellaneous picture frames. A handful of scattered bare bulbs provide what scant light exists._

_She’s started casually circling what little of the room she can, pointedly inspecting everything but Baron. “I know Ruiz is here, playing dumb won’t do you any good at this point.”_

_“I don’t know no Ruiz.”_

_No rugs to pull back, so that’s out. “His friends told us he’d been stopping in here every day of spring break while he waits for his mother to get off work. Likes to chat with the antiques, they said.”_

_“I wouldn’t know anythin' about that. I don’t work upstairs.”_

_She runs a hand over the edges of the dressers as she passes, discretely feeling for a switch. Nothing. “Uh huh. How’d you get in, by the way? Sure wasn’t through the front door!”_

_“I’ve heard about you, ya know,” Baron grumbles, eyes narrowed. “Heard you’re possessed.”_

_Mabel Pines twists around sharply, stepping back toward Baron, who leans away on his stool as she leans forward. “T̵h̴̨e̕y’̷̧̢re̕ r̛i͢g͜͏h̕͝t͏!͠͠” says Dipper Pines, who cackles into Baron’s face because he can’t help it (who could?), the sight of such a powerful vampire about to piss his pants facing his diminuitive sister is_ hysterical _._

Ooooo, nice laugh there, ten outta ten, very dismissive!

Thank you. Oh, uh, this isn’t too harsh on your throat, is it?

Nah, you’re fine. Besides, I brought the good lozenges this time! None of that icky ancient lemon-flavoured crap Stan has lying around.

_“L-look,” Baron stammers, holding out a hand as if Dipper were a wild animal. “I already told you, I ain't hiding anythin'.”_

_Dipper’s eyes flit to one of the bookshelves, which Baron has made the rookie mistake of momentarily glancing toward under duress. Mabel smiles, straightening up. “Oho! Which one of them is it, Baron? Give me another lie and I’ll add your fangs to this awesome necklace I’m making.”_

Wait, why are you playing bad cop?

You’ve been bad cop loads of times, it’s my turn.

But that doesn’t make any sense. You should be holding _me_  back, I’m the demon.

Sure it does. Think! If a demon’s all like, 'grrrawr, what this person's planning to do to you is even worse than one of _my_ ideas,' you know for sure that person must mean business. No weaseling outta this with your kneecaps intact!

When have I ever said 'grrawr'? Wow. I wish you’d told me beforehand this is what we’re doing at least.

I only just now came up with the idea though.

_“Look du- you worthless collection of organic matter,” Dipper snarls. “Do us both a favor and give the lady what she wants, I can barely hold her back. Best to tell us what you know before things get r͞ea͟͠lly̕ ugly.” He summons an old cheese grater from the Shack’s kitchen (Stan probably won't miss it) and holds it out in what he believes is the most menacing position._

... What am I gonna be able to do with this?

I really don’t know, but he doesn’t either, which is the point. I'm hoping his imagination will conjure something infinitely worse than I can.

_“Final warning, man," says Dipper testily._

_“Alright, alright!" Baron's eyes don't leave the kitchen appliance as he jabs a quivering finger toward one of the books. "It’s that red one there, fourth row, second from the left.”_

_Mabel’s fingers curl around the edge of the worn book, the cover loose in her hands as she pulls it from the shelf. "Now was that so hard?"_

_The floor disappears._

_…_

_Mabel only avoids a painful landing onto a pile of rotting wood and rebar by Dipper detaching from their body to catch her on his great woolly back_ <transformation nearly instantaneous> _, leaving the collection of sharp objects to pass harmlessly through his own incorporeal stomach._ _“Wheee!” she whoops like someone who isn’t inches away from a gruesome death, sliding off and onto clear concrete. Dipper follows, sloughing off dark wool to reveal his suit, a pair of wicked horns retreating back into his skull as he stands back up on two legs._

_“I’m just gonna… not think about how close that was,” he mutters. Then he holds his hands out in front of him, cupped in the middle, and blows. A bright blue ball of flame bursts into being between his hands and continues to hang there in the air, illuminating their surroundings_ <Experiment 25 had given him a few headaches back in the day <”If I cast a light while immaterial, can you see it? See by it?” <result: Yes> <”Can anyone else?” <result: No>≫> _, after he brings them back down by his sides._

_Looking up reveals they had come down some sort of long chute set into the high ceiling. Dipper doesn’t see how Baron could’ve climbed up there from down here; there must be another entrance back into the building._

_Surrounding them on three sides are old brick walls splotched white by efflorescence, so worn down they look like they'd be soft to the touch_ <Dipper catches Mabel's hand before she can do something she'll regret> _. Ahead, a narrow tunnel looms from the deep shadows cast by the eerie glow of Dipper's spell, winding its way through a series of aging archways into the unknown beyond. Wooden supports sag beneath a bloated ceiling cracked by extensive water damage and crisscrossed by disused pipes connecting nothing to nowhere. Intermittent piles of debris—broken furniture, fallen conduits, and rubble—clog the walkway._

_“Spooky,” Mabel says, brushing aside cobwebs as thick as curtains as the twins start off down the subterranean tunnel. The will-o’-wisp follows faithfully at their heels, but judging by the way Mabel rubs at her arms it provides little_ _in the way of relief from the chill in the air. “This must be where all the urban dwarves, wererats, and cool kids hang out."_

_“The Seattle underground,” Dipper breathes, admiring the neglected masonry. “Oh man, I remember this place from Ghost Harassers. Supposedly these tunnels were haunted. And that was before the Transcendence.”_

_“That stuff about the sidewalks around here being hollow’s no joke?” Mabel looks about curiously as they pass boarded up storefronts, some still marked by busted signs. It certainly looks like some sort of ghost town._

_“Yeah. This all used to be street level, til they raised the city and collectively forgot about it. I think a few tunnels are still kept up for tourists, but for the most part, the place is condemned.”_

_Mabel whistles appreciatively. "Ruiz picked the perfect place to play hide-n-seek.”_

_“You're tellin' me. It's gonna take a lot longer to find this kid than we thought, huh?”_

_..._

_As they come to yet another fork in the path, Dipper stops. “Wait a second…”_

_“What is it?” Mabel asks, stopping too._

_“We’ve been walking straight ahead this entire time.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_He nods toward an opening on their left, a tunnel which continues only a few feet in before the ground disappears beneath stagnant water. The irregular echoes of dripping rainwater bounce off the walls from someplace further on into that darkness. “I could've sworn we passed by this one already. Hold on, I’ll see where we are.” Dipper rises toward the ceiling... only to hit his head. “Ow, ow, ow,” he whines reflexively, covering his head with both hands_ _._

_Mabel's voice drifts up from below. "You can’t phase through?”_

_“Okay," Dipper says to himself, "I think I’m starting to get the picture.”_

_Just to be sure, he tries again, pushing against the walls, ceiling, floor, and finding himself repelled by all. He’s expecting as much this time, but he feels it anyway; that firework-flash of indignation. She hasn't needed his vision to pick up on the frustration that creeps into his tone lately, into the burning of his eyes_ <"If I'm going to be this thing, can't I at least be good at it?"> _. He’d thought becoming stronger at the impressive rate he has would satisfy him, but if anything he only feels his temper growing shorter, his patience growing thinner. It was as though his accomplishments did nothing but move the goalposts now, set a new baseline and higher expectations of his abilities._

_You cannot cross this barrier, says the spell (rather smugly, he imagines), and though it grates at him like dragging claws along a chalkboard, he has no choice but to obey._

_For now._

_“Someone’s cast Curse of Labyrinth," Dipper explains, admitting defeat and returning to his sister's side._

_Mabel's already crossed her arms, braced for bad news; no doubt she'd sensed his mood sour. "I’m gonna guess that’s not a super positive thing.”_

_“I’ve heard about this happening before on the news a couple years back. Someone cast it on Chicago O'Hare. The airport's maze of tunnels and walkways claimed countless souls and their respective search parties, all means of navigation rendered useless.”_

_“What happened?”_

_“Huh? Oh, nothing. No one noticed any real difference, it wasn’t detected for nearly a week. The TSA screeners are sphinxes to this day, I’ve heard. Answering riddles just became part of the new protocol.” Dipper sighs as he runs a hand over the brick wall. “See, this is what happens when you go and call a place labyrinthine, you make it susceptible to spells like this. You’d think humans have no idea the power they wield.”_

_“He says like he’s never been human before.”_

_Dipper winces. "Sorry. Been spending too much time with Morlayna the Red.”_

_“She’s_ still _summoning you?" Mabel crinkles her nose. He isn't too keen on warlocks, himself; the thought of people currying favor with prominent supernatural forces just to gain a few scraps of their power for themselves left a bad taste in his mouth. "Ugh, what does she even want?”_

_“No clue. I get there and it seems like she's got some new, needlessly melodramatic pitch for why I should give her the keys to ultimate power or whatever. But then she goes off on a tangent, ends up rambling about her day instead. I think she might just be lonely.”_

_“Did you explain to her that summoning demons makes it a little difficult to make friends?” Mabel would know_ <"Why does that never work? Is it the backward chanting, you think, or maybe your weird eye thing?"> _._

_“I tried, but then she started crying and I felt bad.”_

_“Maybe she’s got a crush on you.”_

_Dipper attempts to simulate a shiver; it comes out looking a bit cartoonish but he's sure she gets the point. “Aw c’mon, don’t make me think about stuff like that, it’s awkward enough.”_

_Mabel kicks an old bottle_ <eager for action>, watches it soar into a nearby garbage bin with a satisfying clunk. _“Alright then, back to business! How do we beat this curse?”_

_“Well, to defeat a labyrinth, you have to find the way out. That is, figure out the correct path to take that gets you to the exit. I’m not ‘allowed’ to phase through the walls because that would be ‘cheating’," he says, making liberal use of finger quotes._

_“Maybe you could tell the crew to split up and search?” Mabel never passed up an opportunity to involve the flock in a mission ("You should take them out more, they need their exercise!")._

_Dipper shakes his head. If the nightmares could manifest here, they would have done so the moment he realized the danger. “No can do. If I can’t get out, they can’t come in. I'm telling you, it reeks of a trap.”_

_Mabel silently puts on her scepticles. “Mm, I dunno. Wouldn't that mean Baron was faking? He seemed plenty afraid from where I was standing!”_

_“Fear is hard to feign," Dipper agrees, turning to glare at one of the brick walls, as though he could intimidate it into granting him passage. "No, whoever cast this spell—and weakened the wards on the door probably, while we're at it—I think it’s safe to say they’ve thrown Baron under the bus. He’s stuck too now after all, if he tries to leave.”_

_A ruddy brown_ <disappointment> _tints Mabel's aura. “Well if it is a trap, it's not a very good one. Aren't labyrinths supposed to have monsters? And hot guys?”_

_“Maybe the spell’s still in its early stages. We should probably leave before—” A finger is pressed to his lips before he can finish his thought._

_"Shhh! You hear that?”_

_They listen for the sound of..._

_..._

_...rumbling in the distance._

_"No, I'm not talking about that, I mean that squeaking - ah!"_

_Mabel hops back as a pair of chittering_ <NOT SO MUCH FUN BEING THE ONES SHOVED INTO A MAZE NOW IS IT? AAAAHAAAHAAHAAA!> _cat-sized rat skeletons scamper past._

_…_

_"Is it mobile?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Is it earthbound?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Does it have at least one wheel?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Is it an otter riding a unicycle?"_

_"No. So close! It was an odder riding a unicycle. Okay, my turn."_

_“Actually, I think it's about time for a new plan,” Dipper says as they pass a familiar wall of fading graffiti_ <"TERA WAS HERE"> <"we didn't start the fight / it was always rumbling / since the world's been tumbling"> <"Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo."><the first time they passed through Mabel had left some of her own <she's never without at least one can of spray paint <"We've gotta leave our mark physically as well as figuratively!" <said mark consisted of the words "Mystery Twinz" in highly stylized <vivid magenta> lettering>>>> _._

_“I’m just saying,” Mabel says, breathing rather heavily despite their sluggish pace. “If labyrinths work on weirdness rules, naturally the best course of action is to keep wandering aimlessly. It can’t frustrate plans we don’t have!”_

_“But we've already been down this way. If we could use a bit of your paint to mark the walls...”_

_Mabel lifts herself onto the rotten guardrails of their current wooden walkway to sit down. “See, this is probably why it isn’t working, you keep trying to logic us out. We already tried it your way, get with the program, Dipster!” Dipper's way had involved interrogating the dead rats (and dead raccoons and dead human skulls_ <Mabel insisted on the 'dead' prefix even when it was not necessary> _) populating the tunnels as to the whereabouts of the labyrinth's exit. Unfortunately, threatening suffering, death, and boredom_ <"Do you guys have any idea how much useless trivia on this place I've got floating around in my thinkspace by now? I can keep us here all night if I have to." <"No please, have mercy, anything but that!" <"Mabel, it's not YOU we're torturing!">>> _on creatures that were already long dead proved laughably ineffective. Literally—the skeletons had laughed in the twins' faces, taunted them even as they gave up and went on their way_ <HEY RATSPUTIN, WHAT'S THAT HUMAN GOT IN COMMON WITH A DOG? <I DON'T KNOW, RATAGAST. WHAT? <THEY BOTH GO AROUND CHASING THEIR TAILS!>>> _._

_Dipper tilts his head, staring at his sister. Three breaks in the past ten minutes seems excessive. "You doing okay there?”_

_Mabel tries to answer, but suffers a short coughing fit instead. She settles for shaking her head, putting her arms up_ <the way she’d been taught to open her airways when she'd <briefly <"Look Maple, you've got to try and be more competitive, really go for it. Remember: you didn't just come here to have fun and make friends." <"But that's exactly why I'm here!">>> tried out tennis in high school> _._

_"Must be all this dust," Dipper says, even as the sudden influx of guilt and concern he feels sets the gears in his head turning full speed. Who knows what sort of germs humans could catch down here? And isn't carbon monoxide found in enclosed, underground spaces or something? Even if the air isn't toxic, does she have, like, enough oxygen to breathe? Damn it, why didn't he think of these things sooner?!_

_Mabel looks up at a nearby skylight made up of tiny rows of filthy glass planes. Shadows occasionally cross over them, accompanied by the heavy thump of footsteps. She cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, “Hey! Hey, we’re down here!”_

_“They won’t be able to hear you,” he tells her, not for the first time_ <they had come across many such skylights down here>.

_She slumps forward with an exaggerated groan, cradling her beet red cheeks in her hands. “I hope Soos isn’t getting worried. We've been down here like half an hour.”_

_Dipper may not have figured out an escape, but the faster they get going again, the faster he figures they can get there. “Hey, c'mon now," he says, crouching to face her with a smile, "What’s the one thing television has taught us?”_

_He's relieved to get a weak smile in return. “That any problem can be solved in an hour or less!”_

_“That’s the spirit,” he says, holding out a hand as he stands. “Come on, we’ve got more wandering in circles to do.”_

_"Right!"_

_Mabel reaches out to take Dipper's hand. She passes straight through him._

_“Huh?” both twins say at once, each scrutinizing their own hand._

_Mabel looks up at him and he watches billowing ultramarine_ <astonishment> _invert, giving way to a dull rust_ <shock> <they’ve never not been able to make contact> _. “Dipper, uh. You’re looking a little more… see-through than usual. Are you, uh, doing okay?”_

_“I could ask you the same thing,” he says_ <even though he already has> <his expression mirrors her own> _. "You look wiped out."_

_Rumbling in the distance_ <louder than earlier> _fills the silence as the two of them ride out the beginnings of panic, which only builds as they try (again) and fail (again) to hold onto one another_ <now when it's needed most> _. Dipper sees Mabel pinch her arms at one point and doesn’t blame her; if he were capable of nightmares, he would have come to the same conclusion. He_ has _come to the same conclusion._

_This can't be happening._

_She's shaking like a leaf, like she'll shake herself to pieces_ <and <make no mistake> she will> _. "But I can still see you, right? So maybe it's not..."_ <"...permanent," she means>

_Because if it is..._

_He's sparking like a lit fuse, like he'll burn himself out_ <and <make no mistake> he will> _. "But you can still hear me, right? So maybe it's just..."_ <"...temporary," he means>

_Because if it isn't..._

 

<imagining that would be too dangerous>

<so they don't>

_..._

_“I think it’s the magic,” Dipper murmurs finally, lifting his head to stare_ <eyes dull as they've ever been> _down the walkway at the remnants of the bygone establishments they’ve passed. Bank teller cages, hotel entryways, a barber's pole, the bathroom stalls of a café. All left to rot in the darkness, abandoned and forgotten. “It’s… no, not hostile, that’s not it… Inhospitable. This isn’t a place for people to live. This is a place for things to disappear, never again to see the light of day.”_

_Dipper looks back to his hands and tries to keep them from trembling as he flexes them (I’m here), curls them into fists (I exist). “Remember- Remember when Candy was testing out her death ray designs?”_

_“Yeah," Mabel says breathlessly. She's been resting for a few minutes now on this patch of floor lined with illegible, decaying newspaper, but she hasn’t yet been able to summon the strength to stand again ("Okay so maybe it isn't allergies..."). That isn’t enough to stop her from going on, as usual; a fact which restores some modicum of Dipper's hope. “She wasted all that ammo firing through you with them because she was, um... trying to prove you wrong about somethin’ and you wouldn’t quit laughing. Me n’ Grenda had to stage an intervention before she could bring McGucket into it and erase the town off the- well, it isn’t on any maps, but you get the picture. What about it?”_

_“I told her that there’s one thing you can’t kill. I told her that you can’t kill an idea. I think… I think I was wrong.”_

_The rumble has grown loud enough to shake the dust from the ceiling in curtains, stray motes slowly drifting down through the air, looking like a rain of glitter in the waning firelight. Doors and gates scream in the distance as they turn on ancient hinges. Something is coming. Dipper doubts it is a manitaur._

_Mabel presses a sleeve to her mouth to keep from inhaling the dust, muffling her words. "We could make a deal."_

_"Mabel..."_

_"I could forfeit bubble wrap. Maybe go back to being vegan?” Mabel had been vegan for about two years, back when Dipper couldn’t yet help informing her in unnecessary detail where things_ <such as her lunch <as she was eating it>> _came from. “I can tough it out if it means us not dying. Barely, but I can."_

_Dipper forces himself to look his sister dead in the eyes. "Mabel, you can't make deals with me anymore. Not ever."_

_The remaining sliver of Mabel's good humor disappears behind the clouds, leaving him feeling cold before she's even spoken a word. "... Seriously?" she says, progressively raising her voice_ <as if to disguise hurt with anger <but her voice betrays her as always <veering too quickly to unintelligibly tremulous when she's upset>>> _in that way he knows means she's on the verge of tears. "You're seriously gonna fight me on this right now?" But he's already shaking his head. "Then why not."_ <not a question <a demand>>

_Oh what he wouldn't give to not have to explain. It's been months now, but in all that time he was never able to find the right words, the right time. "I haven't- I haven't been turning your deals down because... because I wanted to," he says, struggling to maintain eye contact, struggling to keep his voice—that isn't human, that shouldn't behave this way—from breaking. "I_ couldn't. _Okay? We_ can't. _You... you gave me your SOUL, Mabel. Don't you get it? You-you don't_ have _anything left to give, that was... there's nothing you can give that..."_

<that he cannot already take from her>

<that he cannot already use her to get>

<a change of heart is all it would take>

_But he doesn't need to finish. His sister, of all people, can use her imagination._

_They hold each other's stare just a moment more. And then Mabel looks away_ <down the tunnel toward the rumbling> <she saw the truth in his eyes that she'd been searching for> _, looking so completely defeated_ <aura coiling into a knot <as tiny as it can make itself be <because it doesn't want to be>> of yellows and pinks and reds and back <too quick for him to register <so mixed up it may as well be no color at all>>> _it makes Dipper want to scream and go on screaming until the sky splits._

_For the first time in a long time, it seems neither twin has anything to say to the other. Instead, the rumbling swells to a dull roar and he hates it, he can't deal with it right now, with this maddening noise on top of everything, the impossible, crushing everything, the panic, the fear, the self-hatred, the hopelessness_

_And any moment now, it is going to crush him, it's got to crush him, because it isn't supposed to happen like this, not with the two of them alone and apart, just please let it not be happening_

_Any moment now_

 

_But then    curiously       rather than crushing him_

<when Dipper was eleven he fell off a trampoline and onto a bed of rocks at some kid's birthday party <he'd contended that he'd been pushed <he had been pushed <but as usual no one believed that <"When _isn't_  that kid making things up?">>>> and had to get stitches <he'd been terrified <tried <to no avail> to make it out like he didn't need them>>>

<and then the anesthetic <lidocaine> kicked in and Dipper had marveled at the way he felt nothing> <like his arm was no longer a part of him> <like he'd stepped outside of himself and become an observer>

_all the feeling      ebbs away      to nothing._

 

_That's not it, exactly. The feelings are still there, still hammering away at him, incessant as ever, but it's muted somehow, like hearing voices raised in the next room but being unable to make out the words, unable to ascertain what all the fuss could be about._

_What_ is _all the fuss about, really? Do They think they're gonna kill off the Mystery Twins, one a demon at that, by sealing them underground of all things?_

<...>

_Please. It sounds absurd._

 

_If that sound Dipper heard just now was indeed laughter, it must have been the faintest he's ever heard from Mabel. He senses rather than sees that her cherry red bubbling lava_ <anxiety> _has cooled, congealed to gravestone grey igneous rock._

_“What could possibly be funny right now?” Dipper says, even though as he asks he realizes it must come from the same place as the small smile he finds himself wearing. Not amusement at all, just the product of a release of tension._

_“It hit me just now, outta nowhere." A voice that is indisputably, unquestionably Mabel’s (what, like he was expecting someone else?). "Something like... this whole thing here? This is nothing."_

_"Yeah... yeah, I think I know what you mean actually," Dipper starts. "It feels like..."_

_“We've already been here before?” Mabel concludes, clutching the fabric of her shirt above her heart as the darkness encroaches. (They aren’t afraid anymore. It’s as if, rather than these being their last moments, they have all the time in the world_ <they have so much more than that> _.)_

_"Yeah, that's it. Pretty ridiculous, right? When you think about it.”_

_“Totally. Like… who does this place think it is? Doesn’t it get who it’s dealing with here?”_ _Mabel forms a megaphone with her hands again and shouts down the hallway at the top of her lungs, at the infinite unknown no doubt barreling down on them. “NEWSFLASH! We’re already dead! You aren’t about to be the thing that finally gets us to shut up and_ _stay_ _down!” Dipper laughs and for once doesn't care how piercing and distorted it becomes. If they’re going to die_ <twice> _, let them die irreverent._

_A violent jolt rocks through the Underground like a crashing wave in response, toppling tanks and knocking old gears loose from derelict machinery whose original purpose the twins could not begin to guess._

_"Well, I guess this is it, bro!" Mabel crows as she stands to face the oncoming rumbling. He doesn’t know how he could have ever mistaken that reckless, snapping cloud of radioactive green_ <excitement> _for as dull of a color as grey. She's_ amped _, and the feeling is swiftly becoming contagious. "No more deals? Ha! More like no more_ training wheels _, am I right?"_

_"We didn't need the journals then,” Dipper Pines says, finding his feet._

_"We don't need Diane now,” Mabel Pines agrees, squaring her shoulders._

_The door at the furthest end of the hall bursts open and an acrid smell fills the air as a pyroclastic flow of noxious smoke_ <century-old> <so dense the source cannot be seen> _speeds toward them, reaches out_ <longingly> _for the twins_ <the Lord of the Forgotten <come to claim its newest subjects≫ _._

_A hand is offered._

_Another hand_ <impossibly> _takes it._

_Then, riding a wave of phantom adrenaline, Dipper Pines plunges into the realm of the physical._

_…_

_Left. He isn’t human. Left. A labyrinth is a trap meant for humans. Left. Just keep repeating that. Left. Until it sinks in. Left._

Uh, I think we really are going in circles now.

_A victorious smile. “Are we?” He supposes she can't feel this, this sense of spiraling further and further inward, toward the center of the maze._

_He stops in his tracks when his final turn reveals a path ending in a large steel door—not busted or boarded up, but relatively new._

... How?

_“When we first came in, we moved forward and ended up going in circles,” Dipper explains as he tags out. “So I ran us in circles until we ended up moving forward. Simple, right? Can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier.”_

_"That makes all kinds of sense."_

_Mabel kicks open the door. Inside, a scruffy teenager sits cross-legged on a twin-sized bed, every inch of the otherwise bare room covered in shiny, decorative eggs. “You could've knocked," he says, tossing one of the eggs to Mabel. "Could you guys let Baron and them know these are all fakes? I don't really get what's such a big deal about this Fabergé egg they're looking for, but if they're serious about finding it, they should really just introduce me to one of the real ones so I can ask it."_

_"Never mind all that!" Mabel shouts, throwing up her hands and sending the egg tumbling into the tunnel behind them_ <no longer a winding impossibility> <the curse has collapsed <leaving behind nothing more than a short passageway connecting basement and underground storage room>> _. "We're your rescue! Pack your things so we can kiss this stupid place goodbye already!"_

_Ruiz rolls his eyes like a seasoned pro, taking a long sip from a paper cup_ <twin-tailed mermaid logo <an espresso>> _. "Hilarious guys. I know my parents wouldn't send a pair of fellow freaks after me. They'd call, like, the actual police." When Mabel produces the badge, he releases a long-suffering sigh. "Points for trying and all, but your eyes? Dead giveaway. Also your friend there is literally floating."_

_Mabel and Dipper look at each other._

_"Wait, you can see him?" says Mabel, turning back to the boy just as Dipper says, "Um, Mabel, your eyes are..."_

_Still brown._

_The glossy white pupils are new._

_…_

_“How’d it go, doods?”_

_“Worst dungeon EVER! I rate it a two out of ten. There wasn’t even any treasure down there.”_

_“Or puzzles.”_

_“Nobody likes dungeon puzzles. It’s always some ultra-bore chore like move these blocks to these squares to open this door. Haven’t the ancient dungeon masters ever heard of keys?”_

_“Puzzles aren’t as boring as fetch quests. A cool reward doesn't change the fact you've been reduced to a glorified Labrador- ow, hey!”_

_“I said take it back!”_

 

`Woah wait where what's going on?`

`<a mindscape not your own> <the continual disconnection and dispersion of memory>`

`Oh yeah. I knew that. It just... took me a minute.`

`<you bit off slightly more than you could chew with that one>`

`Yeah well. I handled it, didn't I? Have a little faith, I'm getting better at this.`

`<but you are running out of time>`

`That's not helpful! This is your problem! We've talked about this!`

`<it's very simple> <you can only work so fast> <it is not enough to reach everything <<forget a plurality> even 1% of everything is beyond you>>`

`Thank you.`

`<sarcasm>`

`I know that... I'm the one who said it.`

`<you know> <they may not>`

`This the same 'they' he talks about?`

`<no>`

`You're going to have to explain.`

`<no>`

`That's fair. Anyway, looks like I caught'cha. What makes you think I  _need_  everything?`

 

 

**** **[off the record]**

As the two teens approach the box office with the twins in tow, Thompson perks up. “You guys lose a bet with Wendy and get stuck babysitting?”

“We prefer the term ‘chaperone’,” Nate says, but they’re all smiling.

“What’ll you fine gentlemen be seeing today?”

“It Lives, Again!, For the Third Time.”

A pudgy finger points to Dipper and Mabel. “You aren’t taking them in there, are you? This is the real deal, we’ve had people wet themselves and everything.”

“As if. They’ll be seeing…” Lee rolls his eyes, his disgust plain. “Ducktective: The Crimson Dove Letters.”

Thompson gives Lee the tickets, hands briefly clasping his before releasing the scraps of paper. “You. Are braver men than I.”

They pass Thompson, they show their tickets, they round a corner. They look around.

The coast is completely clear; eleven-thirty on a Tuesday doesn’t see much traffic.

Nate quirks an eyebrow. “And you promise not to tell anyone about this?”

Dipper raises a hand, palm out. “On my honor,” he says, a solemn vow.

As the teens slip surreptitiously through the door beside the poster featuring a bloodstained missive surrounded by the silhouette of a duck, Mabel puts her head to the side. “But that time you crushed me at Monotony you said demons don’t have any- oh.”

“Exactly,” Dipper says, holding open the door beside the poster featuring an old wooden casket with a bloodshot eyeball peering out through a crack. “Never hurts to have leverage.”

“True dat.”

 

**** **2-1-6-12**

By the time Dipper manages to shunt _Mystic Rituals and Their Space Time Applications_ through the jammed return slot (probably some inattentive patrons sticking empty soda cans in it again), Henry is already back with another book. This time, _Argentina: Art, Arms, and Archaeology_.

Dipper bestows the cover only the briefest of glances. “Pass.”

Henry trails him past the suits of armor guarding the entrance to the children’s section (“Read a book to knight!”) and into young adult (it’s tied with reference for the most places to sit), unwilling to be so easily deterred. “You haven’t even skimmed it yet.”

“Trust me, as you get older you hone your ability to instantly, preemptively calculate whether engaging with something will be a total waste of your precious remaining lifespan.” Dipper briefly orbits the room checking for cameras (there’s really no (rational) need now that that theory has been thoroughly debunked, but old habits die hard and it helps him relax) before touching down in a chair set in a dim corner (all the corners are dim, they never turn the lights on in this place (complaints voiced regarding this had only provoked an impromptu speech from Henry on the subject of daylight design in libraries and how it’s characterized such spaces for veritable centuries (what a neeeeerd))). If Mabel weren’t so busy scouring the DVD aisle for the five scariest horror films she can find, she’d probably be giving him the spiel about how that’s bad for his eyes. What can he do about it? The spots near the windows and beneath the skylights are all taken up by drowsy teenagers (there must be a summer reading assignment due soon (another reminder that they are running out of vacation)).

With a sigh, Henry heads back toward the stairs. Dipper watches him go, giving the thing in his left pocket a halfhearted squeeze (for all the good that’s done). Time to get back to it.

He retrieves the journal from his backpack, flips to that blasted final page. He spends about five minutes just glaring at it, absently twisting his new favorite pen between his fingers (he’s not been paying much attention to the puzzle inside now that he’s got a new lead to contemplate). Sure, he’d promised the kids he’d consider it, but _man_ , the solution to his first real mystery in years being ‘Bill Cipher is back’… it sucked all the fun out of the thing, and took his motivation with it. He and his sister had been well-equipped to handle any manner and magnitude of supernatural threat, from wildfire ant infestations to armies of arachnereids. What he isn't sure he can deal with is this _fucking demon again._ Just looking at this is making him an odd mix of angry and tired, which only serves to make him angrier because allowing the thought of Bill to elicit any emotional reaction from him, after years of not thinking about the demon, feels like letting him win. Because Dipper has forgotten so many things since the day he woke up here, why couldn't this be one of them? What did it say about him ~~as a person~~ that his memory of a long-vanquished enemy has proven more persistent than that of dear friends, of family, even?

~~Well, those people didn't kill you, did they?~~

He spends the next ten minutes scribbling a new theory in the margins. Soul Transfer Theory: he’d stolen the soul of his alternate self and taken his place. Now there’s a theory!

Yeah, he’s stalling again.

~~He's found himself stalling a lot lately.~~

Probably just the heat. It'd been sweltering yesterday, and they'd all taken a break to go to the pool. Mabel is still nursing a nasty sunburn, having rushed in without pausing to apply sunscreen. Luckily, his past self had packed plenty of aloe vera for precisely this reason.

A soft knocking on the nearest bookshelf pries Dipper's attention away from the journal to find Henry leaning against the wall beside him. He passes him yet another hefty book containing an ancient, untouched checkout card, _Encyclopedia Botanica, Volume 23, Part 1: Theoretical Perspectives_.

“Pass.”

If Henry is getting frustrated by these answers, there’s no sign of it whatsoever in his sensible tone. “Dipper, it isn’t possible for you to already know everything in every book in the building.”

“I know… a lot of stuff, Henry.” Dipper shrugs. “It’s not that your idea isn’t a good one, it’s just that, knowing me, of course the first place I’m gonna go is the library, right? I can’t see my jailer hanging the keys up within arm’s reach of the bars, know what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“Besides, I’ve been around a while, it’d be no sweat to stock a library or fifty with things I’ve learned in the past. They’d have to be extraordinarily lazy for us to find a fault in here.”

"If you already know everything, why did you bother checking out a book?"

"As a reminder. There was no new information, nothing that isn't already buried in there somewhere." Dipper taps the side of his head, but that isn't what he's referring to. Imagine: storing your memories _inside_ your body! That seemed like a good way to misplace something. "I used to have this system, y'know, for recalling things, but... I guess that's gone now. So I did it the old-fashioned way."

Henry wanders off again, apparently not eager to argue (which is a shame, because Dipper often is and it would have helped him procrastinate). Dipper reluctantly returns to The Page, starts writing the first things that come to mind. Hopefully the familiar movement of the pen will grease the wheels a bit and stream of consciousness will take care of the rest.

‘Motive’ is first. He can deduce from the fact that he isn’t currently being inexhaustibly tortured that this world must have been intentionally designed by his host( ~~s?~~ unlikely) to be this cozy. On top of that, the groundwork for spellcraft this intensive would need to have been laid well in advance; a substitute reality this cohesive could not have sprung into being by accident nor in the heat of a moment. This could only point to one purpose: a distraction. Whatever their goals, the demon responsible must need Dipper out of action, at least temporarily. They'd likely chosen the memory of this summer as the setting because it was the last he'd spent human, rendering him powerless within its confines.

He can admit that's an appealing thought, the possibility that Bill Cipher regards him as a threat worthy of unceremonious containment. If there is one thing that demon can be counted on to do, it is his worst. And if this is the worst he could do? P a t h e t i c.

Dipper continues to amuse himself considering the rude awakening the other demon would have upon realizing that even without their monstrous guardian, the Pines family are hardly defenseless. He can practically picture it now: Willow’s magic reducing that three-sided menace to mincemeat before his mandatory maniacal monologue could even hit its stride, Dipper’s nightmares descending upon the unfortunate remnants. Maybe this theory isn’t so bad after all.

Next is the important part, ‘Points to Investigate’. He flips to ‘Divergences’ for review; there could be a pattern to all these changes (there must be some reason the other demon hadn’t simply copied Dipper’s original experience of his first summer in Gravity Falls verbatim). It’s a rather lengthy entry. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the list pertains to himself.

  * Takes really long showers? Regularly! Hogs all the hot water, burned himself a couple of times. Says his bones are cold and that he’s trying to recapture some of that internal heat he’s used to (he “claims” to be a demon, but could he really have been… some sort of DRAGON?! Dun dun DUUUUN! See: Mabel’s Far Superior Theories, page 4).
  * Keeps using made up words. Not the fun made up words from our old conlangs, Senip-Sniwt and Qomrd-Yeomd — totally new ones! He told me it’s future slang and not to think too hard about it.
  * Suddenly could not care less how squeaky his voice is getting. Says his “real” voice is actually higher and does way more embarrassing stuff than crack when he gets upset. Kinda like to hear that!
  * Doesn’t hide his birthmark or wear any kind of hat. Head-shy if anything — I tried to shove one of those trucker hats from the gift shop on him for science (it just made sense?) but he just went weirdly stiff and then he ducked me! Knowing him, he won’t let his guard down again for at least a couple of days. In the meantime though, he makes up a new bogus story about his birthmark on the spot every time somebody asks about it. They’re actually pretty funny! Sometimes it’s a sign of a rare mutation caused by taking a dive into toxic waste, sometimes it’s a treasure map he’s carried with him from his past life as a pirate, sometimes it’s the scar left from an implanted alien tracking device because he’s secretly a mole for our future Martian overlords. When I’m nearby, he’ll call it some kind of witch’s mark so I can get in on it. By the end of one of our tales, we had a customer convinced that we’d magicked the gift shop t-shirts to give you the power to be invisible for as long as you can hold your breath (as a cool prank). They gave us a hundred and fifty bucks for one! Grunkle Stan was so proud, he let us keep 10%.



When next Henry enters with yet another book, Dipper holds out a hand. “Trade me?”

“Um, sure,” Henry says, swapping book for journal. “Any particular reason why?”

“You tell me if anything jumps out at you about those lists and I’ll tell you if I learn anything new about…” For the first time, Dipper has to reread the title of Henry’s latest find. “The Occult Bestiary?”

Henry folds his arms and shrugs, gaze locked firmly on his shoes. Strange.

Dipper flips through some hundred pages like a deck of cards (here is yet another physical sensation he didn’t realize how much he’s missed, that feeling of the paper brushing against his thumb), passively noting the dogeared corners and beaten, black leather cover. Different from the last few Henry’s brought him, that’s for sure, but still… “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a mythical creature on this earth I don’t Know about,” he says, unable to keep a trickle of pride from seeping into his words as he thinks of the multitude of journals stashed inside the closet under the stairs, written back when he still harbored that curious desire to someday share the extent of his knowledge willingly with the world at large. When he looks up, he finds Henry staring. “What is it?”

Henry shifts his weight, fingers drumming the journal cover. “Sorry if I confused you, but I didn’t pick that one out for you, actually. It’s for me.”

Oh.

“Trying to do some studying up on demons? You could just ask, I won't charge you for it.” He can't help the in-joke there. "I won't charge you for it," had started its life as a way of putting his sister's new boyfriend at ease, back when Henry had had no idea what was expected of him from Dipper and was massively uncomfortable asking him to so much as hand him a glass of water as a result. The phrase had eventually come to be attached to any small request. ("I could just tell you where the toothpaste is, I won't charge you for it.")

“No it’s, it’s not really for _this_ investigation, more of a… you’d probably call it a side quest.”

“One that we could help with?” Henry, looking conflicted, doesn’t immediately respond, so Dipper does his best to smile reassuringly. “You’re not gonna hurt anyone’s feelings by admitting you’ve got other, saner things to do when you aren’t hanging out with us. Sorry for dragging you so far into this by the way, I honestly never expected it to become the world's most perplexing scavenger hunt.”

“No, don't be, I just didn't think that you… You said just now you know all there is to know about supernatural creatures, but when I told you guys that story, you know, about that woman I met? It didn’t sound like you recognized her.”

Dipper sinks back in the chair a moment to meditate on this, beginning to catch on. “Huh… You’re right. I thought at the time something about all that sounded familiar, but… anyway no, this particular vanishing helpful spirit didn’t ring any bells.” Henry nods as if to accept this, but Dipper isn’t finished. “Consider me on the case.”

“I appreciate it."

"You shouldn't, I'm only saying I'll think about it to get out of thinking about that," Dipper says with a smile, indicating the journal.

Henry laughs as he settles into the chair beside Dipper’s. "You said it was a good theory."

"It is! It is and it's kind of infuriating."

"Was there such a thing as a satisfying theory though? They all seemed pretty, uh... unpleasant."

"I mean, you’re right, I would have been angry no matter who was behind this, but I was really gunning for it being the 'government', you have no idea." Dipper folds his arms. "It's like, I would have been so proud of them for finally _doing_ something about me. Not to brag but I'm an absolute menace over there, y'know? The atrocities I've committed, I mean, I think by now I'm worth cloning an entire town to be rid of, y'know?"

"Uh-huh," Henry says, flipping through journal pages, scanning the subheadings. He's learned, much faster than his Henry, when Dipper is, as Mabel might say, "full of it." Dipper expected as much. He figured out early on, people only leap to listen to you when you're a threat, to their status, to their comfort, to their safety. Not that he wants that from Henry; in fact, his Henry's insouciance had been cause for celebration, hard-won as it was over those first few years.

Dipper keeps going. He can't _not_ keep going; it would just come out later, at a less appropriate time. "You freeze an ocean, you invent reverse gravity, and you erase all contronyms from existence and you sit there so excited, thinking, oh, they're not gonna let you get away with it this time, how're they gonna stop you? Maybe they'll put a dedicated task force together, invent some new superweapon, hell, at the very least find out where you live and send a cease-and-desist. But no, instead it's like trying to play chess with someone who doesn't care. Just goes to show... all these so-called agencies and institutions, I've got no faith in them at all."

Henry flips back a dozen pages, probably cross-referencing something. “Well this is certainly… colorful.”

“Hey, if I knew there’d be kids reading it, I’d have kept it PG.”

When Dipper cranes his head over one shoulder to look with him, however, Henry is staring at a page covered in sketches of gargoyles and futuristic weapons. Uh oh.

_Handsome AND handy, that’s Henry!,_ declares the bottom right corner with hearts in places that make no sense, the words leaping over a snapshot of Henry whittling, a pile of wood in the background.

Henry quietly flips back to the beginning of the 'Divergences' chapter, looking up at Dipper. “My first impression is that there's a lot of this... whatever it is. Everyone in town has an entry.”

Dipper nods. “Yeah, I was pretty thorough with my surveys. Their differences don’t have all that much in common that I could see though, other than everyone generally being better off than I think they were when I originally met them.”

“Question.”

“Shoot.”

“You’ve got a few pages to yourself there, I’ve got a note or two here. Where’s Mabel?”

"Hmm... guess I haven't put her down for anything, have I? She's pretty much exactly how I remember her." Dipper smirks, gives his brother a gentle shove. "You've got a one-track mind, you know that?"

Henry reddens and doesn't answer, his eyes darting across the page, but Dipper can tell he's only pretending to read. A couple minutes later, he speaks up again. "There's a lot of people and things marked as straight up missing, any connection there?"

"Just seems to be the demon's M.O. I can't blame them; it's easier, on the surface at least, to delete something than account for how it would change with changing circumstances. For instance, I haven't seen Chris, Gideon, or Blendin around because this version of Gravity Falls can't support them as they were. Of course, holes can leave behind problems, too. Like, if Quentin Trembley isn't real, who founded this town?"

"The Northwests?"

Dipper sniffs dismissively. "That’s just what they want you to think."

Henry lifts the journal. "You mind if I take this with me tonight? That'll give me more time to think about this and come up with a useful answer. Besides, I have an idea I'd like to try."

First Mabel, now Henry. How many people is Dipper going to have to fit into his acknowledgements by the time all is said and done?

...

When they leave the library, Henry is carrying three books. If anything, Dipper finds it strange he didn't borrow more.

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_She twists, feet hitting the pool wall, and then she’s swimming back towards him. He thinks she’s in good shape—running from murderous magical mishaps is good for cardio. She insists she wants to beat Mermandy’s time when she visits Mermando’s kingdom in July ("I underestimated her last time. Who knew manatees were so fast?")._

_Grasping onto the wall, she surfaces._

_“Butterfly stroke,” he tells her._

_She nods, aura luminous as dragon’s flame_ <determination> _, and disappears back beneath the surface with renewed exuberance. He wonders how she can have so much energy left to spare after their cult bash yesterday (they’d finally given Pentwhisl the Prolonged a good curbstomping). He also notes that she’s still struggling on the dolphin kick._

_Leaving her to it, he focuses on dipping his toes into the water. This is his side of the exercise—pretending as hard as he can that he has mass. That ‘He matters!’, as Mabel might put it. He imagines he can feel the cool water wash over his toes and smiles when he starts to see the ripples. It’s not much, but it’s something. It’s a start._

_"I could probably do it for you," he volunteers during her next minute break, not actually wanting to do it._

_"Dipper, you're a terrible swimmer!" She laughs. Dodged a bullet there; swimming isn't… his favorite thing. "Or should I say terribubble?"_

_"You really shouldn't.”_

_“Gotta come up with some solid puns before I go, that’s very important. I’m gonna have this whole script for when I win and a backup in case I lose, so I sound really sportsmanlike either way.” Mabel Pines leans back against the wall, both elbows up on the curb. “How’m I doing on time?”_

_Dipper Pines points up at the digital clock set into the wall near the entrance to the showers, its large red letters slowly ticking away the time. He doesn’t blame her for not noticing; it’s still a relatively new addition._

_“What?” she says, looking directly at it. “What are you pointing at?”_

_“You mean you can’t see it?” he says flatly._

_“See what?”_

_“The clock.”_

_“What clock?”_

_…_

_“I know what cataracts look like.”_

_“Yeah I’m sure you do, it’s not like I get paid to cut those out of people or anything.”_

_“But—!”_

_Mabel puts an arm out across his chest, preventing him from advancing. “Easy, Dipper.”_

_“Mabel, no names!” Dipper hisses, only to bury his face in his hands as he registers his mistake. It’s only been a month since they started using dedicated aliases and somehow they still haven’t got it down._

_Dr. Jericho the sylph, whose Kentucky bluegrass_ <athymia> _and Granny Smith apple_ <exhaustion> _checkered aura hasn’t so much as flickered since the twins first materialized in her office after hours, looks between the two of them. “You’re not going to kill me now, are you?” she says, her cadence invariably smooth (as always), checking her watch as though the twins were asking for a last-minute favor. “I have other things I need to get done tonight, it’s not a good time.”_

_“Well…”_

_“No!” Mabel says, throwing up her hands in exasperation and turning to her brother. “Look, Dipper, I’m sorry, but I just don’t have the mental stamina right now to keep up with your overly intricate web of lies! HOW do you even remember all these fake identities? At the very least can’t we have just one set of names and backstories we use consistently?”_

_Dipper’s lip curls in disgust. “What? But that’s like, using the same password for multiple accounts.”_

_“That’s what I do though! Also… is it really necessary all the time?” She extends both arms in the direction of the ophthalmologist. “I mean, you and Jeri seem to be on okay terms! Wouldn’t you say?”_

_“I suppose so,” Dr. Jericho chimes in, hugging her arms around her chair (she's sitting in it backwards). The sylph looks about ready to fall asleep sitting up._

_“It’s for her protection, too!” Dipper argues with a quick glance toward the doctor, lowering his voice to an agitated hiss. “Someone could come around looking to squeeze people who know us for information or something.”_

_“There you go again, this is so paranoid!” Mabel says, still at full volume rather than following his lead, determined to prove they have nothing to hide._

_“Don't even start with that, these cult guys are seriously insane!” If she can’t be bothered with privacy, there's no point to keeping his own voice down. They’ve already given away their names, why stop there? “Or did you already forget Seattle?”_

_“No, because you won’t quit bringing it up! They haven’t even tried to kill us all that often since then."_

_“Okay sure, fine, I’m sorry for being concerned that there have been multiple attempts on my sister’s life by maniacs, I just —!” He shouts sharply, before slowly deflating. “… I just want you to be safe,” he murmurs. “Is that… is that really so unreasonable?”_

_Mabel softens immediately, giving her brother a playful punch in the shoulder. “Aww bro, it’s alright. Hey, look…” She puts her hands on his shoulders, weighing his floating form down so that he matches her height_ <eye to eye <black and gold to brown and white <too much white>>> _. “I apologize for letting your name slip again. Seriously though, we might wanna think about workshopping some alternatives to all these IDs. How bout it?”_

_Dipper plucks his hat out of the air above his head and fiddles with it in his hands a moment, blowing out a breath. “Yeah, okay.” His eyes find the dozing doctor as he replaces it. “Later.”_

_“Later,” Mabel agrees, releasing him and turning back to Dr. Jericho. “So Jeri!”—the sylph jerks to attention, as if to assert she hadn't been sleeping—“Have to ask. What did you call Dipper before, y’know, like when you summoned him during your residency?”_

_“Um..." She briefly closes her eyes to think. "Mister Monster.”_

_“Woof. I take it all back, that’s perfect. Where’d you come up with that one?”_

_“Well it’s a funny story—”_

_“Okay so it’s not cataracts, then what is it?” Dipper interrupts sternly._

_"The color?" Dr. Jericho's shoulders twitch, too lackadaisical to manage a shrug. “It’s nothing. Veritas, that’s all. If your issue with it’s cosmetic, I can’t help you since it’s not a physical change. It could take mundane types a while to pick up on it.”_

_“Veritas?”_

_"It doesn't have an agreed upon name as far as I know. Not yet. I like to do my spellwork in latin so 'in oculus veritas' is what I built from, but I hear french is popular on account of”—she snaps her fingers—“what's the phrase..."_

<"Les yeux sont le miroir de l'âme.">

_“That sounds about right. Anyway, what you have to understand about this 'condition' is, and I'll warn you that this is all anecdotal, it crops up after you've experienced an, let's call it an event, not necessarily traumatic but... commonly. And it isn't immediate, typically; it comes after it's had a while to sink in. It sort of lurks there, asymptomatic, until... You know how it is, how the extranormal takes its inspiration from the normal. Maybe when you parted ways with a friend they were boisterous and warm, but when you meet again the smile's gone out of their eyes. Or maybe where they were once stumbling and unsure, now their words are steady and their spine is straight. Whatever it is, you can tell in an instant—maybe even as you recognize them—that you don't know this person. This"—the sylph gestures to Mabel—"is only what you've seen before, magnified. I suppose the simplest way to put it is, it's a change in self-perception so fundamental it affects the perception of others. In this case, literally.”_

_Mabel, who has been repeatedly tapping her brother's shoulder since about halfway through the long-winded_ <typical of sylphs <it's why they came to her>> _explanation (urgently signaling she's got something to share), now throws an arm around Dipper and gives Dr. Jericho a small wave. “Could you excuse us for one sec?” Without waiting for an answer, she turns them around and leans her head in close to Dipper’s, forming a huddle._

_“What’s up, Mabel?”_

_“Okay Dipper, let’s say there was this moment, during the Seattle stuff—yes I’m the one bringing it up this time—where it hit me that... you know, I actually died at one point, for real.” She pats her chest with her free hand. “And I mean it actually hit me, like a... like a big ol' lead dodgeball to the stomach, or maybe more like falling off the couch and getting the wind knocked out of me? You get it. So, um.”_

_“…Yeah?”_

_“Did it… well, did it… feel like that for you?”_

_“Huh?”_

_“When your eyes changed.”_

_Dipper pauses, half in thought, half afraid Diane will forcefully drag the answer to the fore_ <he’s revisited that moment often enough of his own volition> _and out of his stupid demon mouth. He remembers the feeling of meeting someone who was everything he had suddenly realized he could never be, and he nods._

_“You’ve died before?” Dr. Jericho, in the way of sylphs_ <historically described as 'the word on the wind'> _, has somehow managed to breeze her way into their huddle without alerting even Dipper’s senses to her presence. Mabel immediately puts her free arm around the doctor to help her feel included. “You really should have mentioned, that’s pertinent past medical history. Let me guess, you haven't been vaccinated.”_

_“Wait, like shots?!”_

_“Oh yeah, inoculation against zombification and such. You’re at elevated risk, wouldn’t want you coming back with anything you could spread.”_

_Mabel remains less than enthused, her face scrunching up. “Bleck, no thank you.”_

_“Suit yourself. Either way, it's not like I'm responsible.”_

_“So this… Veritas thing, you’ve seen humans with it before?” Dipper presses._

_“Oh yeah, I get a couple of people coming in with it now and again, buncha hypochondriacs.” Dr. Jericho wags a stern finger at nobody in particular, visualizing some former patient. “Let me remind you, WebMD is no substitute for a medical professional. Just because your eyes have gone black and seem to have started leaking motor oil—you can’t just assume that means you’re dying.”_

_“Thank you!” Mabel exclaims, dismantling the huddle and giving Dr. Jericho an overenthusiastic handshake before walking briskly toward the exit. “I guess this whole thing was no big deal after all sorry to waste your time let’s go Dipper—”_

_“Woah woah woah, call off the kelpies.” A twitch of Dr. Jericho’s finger and a sudden gust of air snaps the office doors shut in Mabel’s face. Mabel keeps walking and crashes into them, sending her wheeling backward to land on her butt. “That right there? That’s still a problem.”_

_“You said my eyes are fine!” Mabel complains, cradling her bruised nose._

_“I said the color was nothing to worry about. It’s not your eyes we’re concerned with, per say.” The doctor sits back down, resting her arms on the crest of the chair as she stares blearily at a clipboard snatched from her desk. "To review: eye exam is normal, no skyfish, no spirits clinging on, no evidence of execration at home, no symbols or messages carved into your flesh anywhere, and you haven't sustained any recent head trauma. Visual acuity fluctuates with time and I'm gonna go ahead and add 'latency issues' here, judging from your little accident just now." She massages the space between her eyes_ <mentally calculating> _, then says, "If you wouldn't mind sticking around for a few more tests, I can get you a solution by Thursday."_

_“You haven’t explained the problem,” Dipper points out, helping his sister back to her feet. When the sylph sighs, absently twisting her watch around her wrist, Dipper bristles and adds, "Two years I helped manage your insomnia—"_

_“You don't have to keep reminding me. Look, you know how vision typically works, right? The eyes take a picture of something, send it up to the brain, brain’s gotta do some work, gotta put together a story. It makes some guesses, integrates the input from your other senses, and voila. Your eyes seem to be working just fine, you're just having some issues processing what you see.”_

_“Oh great,” Dipper grumbles, “We’ve gone from a visual impairment to brain damage. Reassuring!”_

_“No, no, you're still thinking too physical,” Dr. Jericho says, waving a hand dismissively as she sets the clipboard aside. “There are… other factors that could be causing this.”_

_Dipper did not miss the way the sylph's eyes had briefly darted in his direction. “Factors such as?” he feels himself say, his heart sinking._

_“Well… you should know that I've seen people with these exact symptoms before. In all cases, they'd overused sight sharing spells."  Dr. Jericho massages her clasped hands with a thumb. "Two beings, sometimes more, looking out of the same pair of eyes for too long... it can be taxing, you understand."_

_Mabel leans forward to place a hand on the sylph's. “Give it to us straight, doc.”_

_"Of course. But first..." Dr. Jericho turns, fixing Dipper with that professionally detached stare, as though he were a sample beneath a microscope. “Mister Monster… how often would you say you possess your sister?”_

_..._

_"Or maybe the rectangular ones? I feel like they make me look smarter. What do you think?"_

_An uncommunicative grunt._

_"Dipper, c'mon, you've made that same noise for every one. Which frames are better?"_

_"Doesn't matter what I think."_

_"Yeah it does. Pacifica already OK'd all the tortoise shell ones, but we're torn on the shape so that leaves you as the tiebreaker. What about the half round ones, they're like, the best of both worlds."_

_A sigh._

_"What's the matter?"_

_“I did this. I should be able to fix it.”_

_“You're still- There's like a billion people in the world who get along just fine not being able to see perfectly, it’s not like you ruined my life here.”_

_“Why didn’t you tell me you were having issues earlier?”_

_“It wasn’t that big of a deal, honest, I hardly noticed it at first. Even when I did, it'd normally clear up after a few days. You know how you get, I wasn’t about to start you worrying during missions. I had to push you to even take advantage of the possession option to begin with, there's no way you’d've kept body-sharing if you thought it could hurt me.”_

_“But it did! Maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal, but I do. It isn’t fair.”_

_"You're always saying that... You wanna know what I think's not fair?”_

_“…”_

_“That you don't have a body. That you got thrown into all this demon stuff and had to figure it out on your own, because there wasn’t anything any of us could do to help you. Until this. This one thing I can do. Far as I’m concerned… Mi casa, su casa.”_

 

**2-2-0-6**

The first thing he registers is being shaken.

Then Henry. “Did it work?”

Then Mabel. “Did you have a nightmare?”

Dipper Pines yawns and stretches his back, taking his time; as awkward as it is lying thrown halfway over the edge of the chair, he does not get up. His brother is quick to inform him that he’d fallen asleep during the first few minutes of the movie: The Sparkling. Dipper had forgotten just how much he hates horror as a genre. His hatred of its jump scares and thin plotlines as a preadolescent with a weak stomach had curdled into hatred of its general tedium as an adult (what’s the point when he can frighten actual humans in real life, where he can taste their terror for himself?). That hadn’t stopped him from watching those types of movies of course, if not quite as originally intended (typically either for instructional use or as comedic material for movie nights with friends).

After the introduction of the family to their mysterious new home had come only a pleasant nothingness. “No, no nightmares,” he reports.

Henry sighs. Mabel holds up the next in the list: Puppet Master II: Children at Play. “Hey, don’t sweat it, guys. I know all of Dipper’s weaknesses and I’ve strategically staggered these from simply scary to WORST NIGHTMARE. One of them’s bound to do some psychological damage!”

 

**2-2-1-18**

This time Mabel makes them eat cheeseballs (served with toothpicks) before they watch the movie. “It busts the door to dreamland wide open, I swear. I’ve dreamed some of my best material with these snacks.”

Dipper doses halfway through Midnight Monster Massacre and again dreams of nothing.

 

**2-2-3-18**

“This one’s guaranteed to work!" Mabel says, not at all discouraged by the failure of Children of the Popcorn. Dipper had stayed awake through most of that one, if only to listen to Henry's running commentary on its overarching themes ("In conclusion: nothing is sacred and innocence is a myth."). "Gentlemen, I hold in my hands today... Dipper’s kryptonite!”

Hotline to Hell is actually interesting, with nearly a half hour of pure setup before the unsettling stuff happens. It keeps Dipper on his toes waiting for explanations all the way to the finish. What’s in that half-open closet the camera lingers on a moment too long before cutting away? Was the cannibal the main character’s missing childhood friend all along? How else would he have written those coded messages splayed about the foreground of the opening scene? He doesn’t receive any solid answers and takes his theories with him to bed.

 

**2-2-4-8**

“Well I guess that cinches it,” Mabel concedes over orange juice. “Dipdog really can’t dream.”

“Dipper can’t dream?” Wendy says, overhearing, lowering her magazine (Dipper catches a few of the cover lines ("Homeowner's Complete Guide to the Chainsaw", "Quiz: Are you a lumberjack or a hipster with an axe?", "Tree-huggers: why are they rising and what can be done?")).

“Apparently. We’ve been watching horror nonstop while he’s sleep-deprived, since according to Mister Expert over here that’s one of the easiest ways to give a person nightmares. But it hasn't worked.”

“So you're looking for scares, huh. You know, I’ve got just the guys that can help you out with that." Wendy flicks on a flashlight, shining it under her face. “But dare I tell you?!”

Mabel is already jumping up. “Dare, dare!”

 

**2-2-5-12**

Wendy’s plan was a good one in theory. Dipper might be more resistant to movie-borne nightmares since the plan had been his own and he knew what he was getting into watching them. So, what better way to fix that than by appointing a pair of unpredictable personal tormentors?

Unfortunately, Lee and Nate could not find any way to frighten him. Dipper had woken up this morning to a pair of hideous creatures slavering over his bed (the duo in costume) and had begged for five more minutes rather than for mercy. They’d jumped out of everything, from closets to dumpsters, and he hadn’t so much as batted an eye (little known fact: demons do not flinch (Wobbles was an edge case)). They’d grabbed his feet from under the couch while he went past, replaced his cereal with worms, and even gotten the Mystery Shack staff to pretend to be dead when he walked in from picking up trash in the backyard (complete with “bruises” and “bleeding eyes”; Stan had pretended to be decapitated through clever use of a trapdoor; Dipper gave them points for realism, even if it disturbed him that the nasty trick hadn’t sparked in him the slightest flicker of panic or concern).

It is the teens’ frustration, a ten dollar bet with Wendy, and the threat of having to admit they were unable to faze a twelve-year-old that have lead Lee and Nate to the water tower, and to Dipper dangling from it by his ankles.

In their defense, they never intended to drop him.

In Dipper's defense, he's fifty percent sure his actions will have no lasting consequences.

 

**2-2-5-13**

“Nate and Lee finally give up?” Wendy asks when Dipper returns to the Shack without his shadows.

“Something like that.”

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_Henry opens the door to find his girlfriend on the porch, doubled over with her hands on her knees. Had she… had she run all the way here? “I need Wendy’s old bike,” she says, and her tone is hard, no-nonsense. “Is it here?”_

_Henry scratches at his neck as he gives the world outside a cursory scan for monsters barreling down the driveway or swarming insects blacking out the sky, really any immediate danger that might explain this visit. He finds none; the soon-setting sun’s light filters softly through the trees, the distant songs of thegiant bats just becoming audible—the beginnings of a peaceful autumn night. 1 “Um- what, what’s going on now?” _

_“It’s Dipper,” she says, looking up at him, a few strands ofshoulder-length red hair falling into her eyes. 2 He notes that she isn’t wearing her glasses; she must have forgotten them. That happened occasionally, despite her allegedly having worn them for years. Henry couldn't even imagine; he'd be practically blind without his own. “He’s, he’s, he was, um, I could feel it, I was out in the forest because it's Chris' birthday, but also, Dipper was going to, today’s the day, y’know?, he was going to tell her, Morlayna I mean, that this isn’t working out, she should start summoning other people, and she, and then he, he’s in trouble!” _

_Henry tries to imagine what sort of danger could threaten a demon the likes of what he’d seen beside Mabel that day in the diner, and fails. He steps out onto the porch. “What do you need me to do, how can I help?”_

_“Is Wendy’s old bike here?” she repeats._

_“Yeah, I ride it to work most days.” It was a trusty thing, even if it was constantly squeaking and one brake didn’t quite work. Wendy hasn’t had much use for it since she’s had her Rokon._

_“Then could you do me a huge favor?”_

_This is how Henry finds himself at the train tracks, fastening on a helmet and mounting the rusty bike. Mabel sits in the grass a ways away, hastily scrawling something onto a purple pad of paper by the waning sunlight. When she finishes, she tears off a page and folds the paper up, this way, then that, until finally standing to twirl thrice and chuck it straight up into the air. Henry doesn’t see it come back down._

_Then Mabel is hopping onto the cargo rack behind him, arms around his waist and feet off to the side. When he looks back, she’s glowering out into the distance, head slightly cocked as though she can hear something he can’t. Only for a moment, until she catches him staring and it all melts away, replaced by that familiar, amiable expression. “Full disclosure here, I’ve never been able to get this to work by myself. But I’m confident we can do it together.”_

_Henry faces forward again, staring pointedly at the ground rapidly dropping away before them. He’s never ridden down a hill this steep. “Are you, are you sure? I’ve never done magic before.”_

_Mabel chuckles, though the sound is lacking her usual enthusiasm. “No one’s_ never _done magic before. I’m sure you’ll do fine!”_

_“I’ve got some questions first," Henry says, beginning to sweat. "Just so I understand what it is we’re doing here.”_

_“Fire away!”_

_Here is what Henry has learned: you start with small questions and work your way up to the one you really want to ask._

_“Why Wendy’s bike?”_

_He feels Mabel shrug. Henry gets the impression that as perfect a person as Mabel is, she isn’t ~~good at~~ used to having to explain the logic behind these things. Or perhaps it’s just that she isn’t interested; that, to her, explanations do not seem wholly necessary. Henry has certainly appreciated that Mabel, unlike many people throughout his life, never makes him feel the need to constantly explain and defend himself; around her, he'd felt free to forget expectations, to lower his guard. “Wendy’s always wanted to live in Portland. Her bike’s always wanted to take her there.” _

_Henry thinks of the press he’s seen lately, the heated debate surrounding whether inanimate objects could have souls and, if so, how this could be reliably determined and what rights should be afforded to such entities regarding their containment, disposal, and ownership. He tightens his grip on the handlebars and tries to imagine this thing he’s ridden nearly every day being conscious of him on some level, tries to recall whether there have been any signs of that before now. He swiftly shuts down this line of thinking; the last thing Mabel needs from him right now is skepticism._

_He looks next at the railway. Or at least, what remains of it: much of the disused track has been retaken by nature, overgrown by tall grass, its old wooden ties mostly missing. “Alright, and... why down the tracks?”_

_“Well uh… train tracks serve as these connections between point A and point B. Ever started walking down the tracks, no destination in mind, just trusting them to lead you someplace else?”_

_Henry hasn't. He doesn't think this is the appropriate time to say so. Rather, it’s time to rip off the bandaid. “So I just”—he places one foot on a pedal—“start riding? Is that really all?”_

_“Yeah, and don’t look back or stop for anything!”_

_That isn’t very convincing, but what else can he do?_

_Henry barely has to pedal before gravity takes over and the bike pitches forward under the weight of two riders, barreling fast, faster, much too fast down the hill, wind whipping through their hair and uneven ground battering their wheels._

_Henry hits the brake and they skid down the rest of the way, coming to a wobbly halt at the base of the hill._

_“Hey, why’d you—”_

_“Sorry, we were going too fast.”_

_Mabel throws her hands up, briefly throwing off their balance. “We have to go too fast or we’ll never make it to Portland in time!”_

_“But we’ll- what if we fall off? You don’t have a helmet.”_

_“Desperate times, desperate measures.” Mabel reaches forward to pat Henry’s hand, wrapped around the handlebar. “Besides, this guy won’t let anything bad happen to us. You just gotta believe in him!”_

_Henry isn’t sure whether she means himself orthe bike. 3 Maybe that confusion shows on his face when he looks back, because then Mabel is suggesting that he ride in circles a bit before they try again to get “pumped up!”. _

_Before long, he is staring down the hill again. Before he can pedal forward, however, a hand is on his shoulder._

_“Hey… do you trust me?”_

_Henry knows that nothing good can come after a question like that. But while every time he has heard this from Mabel has been immediately before something disastrous, she has always seen him through to the other side of it unscathed._

_“Yes.”_

_“You can’t touch the brake this time, okay?” Mabel’s voice says. “You’ve got to trust the bike to take you away from here. Maybe you’ve never had train tracks to follow, but have you ever desperately wished you were somewhere else? Or even… that you could be_ anywhere _else, except where you are? Not here exactly, but… just, someplace where you felt stuck.”_

_Henry has! Henry has. But still… when he looks at this bike, when he looks at himself, he doesn’t see anything obviously magical there, not like..._

_“I wish I could be where my brother is. Where he needs me to be.”_

_“… How do you know I can do it? Help get you there, I mean.”_

_“Because I believe you can do anything you set your mind to, Henry.” He can hear her smile. “Take it from somebody with a demon for a twin, that’s a pretty amazing power to have.”_

_Henry feels himself smile too, despite mounting pressure taking hold of his heart. “Well if I’m believing in this bike and you’re believing in me, who’s believing in you?”_

_“I am! I’m pulling double duty. Now, let’s get a move on!”_

_Henry takes a deep breath. Releases it. Pedals forward._

_The moment comes again. The moment where he knows he needs to hit the brake, that they’re going to lose control, that they’re going to crash._

_Henry isn’t sure what makes him look back over his shoulder instead. He’d later wager it was to relieve the weight of some lingering uncertainty, that he’d turned hoping to see from Mabel some sort of confirmation that everything is going according to plan. After all, Mabel is the one who knows what’s going on here._

_The person looking back at him is not Mabel. Mabel doesn’t have eyes that bright, that white against a familiar brown._

_The bike lunges into the air. With the fluttering he feels in his gut, Henry almost expects it to fly._

_They crash hard, the impact tossing them violently off and onto… something surprisingly soft and accommodating. Before Henry can properly make the couch’s acquaintance, however, someone is dragging him up by the collar. He becomes aware of a pair of red eyes, two deep, painful pools of magma, of rage, of madness unending_

 

[ _He recognizes it now, that rigidity to their posture. Movements betraying a lack of familiarity with the body on the part of its inhabitant. He’s known what it’s been to be in such a position, frustrated by the slow responses of a wet, fleshy cage of bone and sinew._

_He can see what the combatants truly are: boundless wrath stuffed within the safety of skin_ _, escaping only through their eyes._ ]

_Sorry, that was one of mine._

_I can’t really control it, she’s like a cat bringing me dead things I don’t want no matter how blatantly I express that I don’t want them._

_Anyway, what happened next?_

 

_`This is making me so nauseous. ` _

`<<whatever you do> do not spit it out>`

 

_“He’s with me, he’s with me!”_

_Henry is released as suddenly as he was apprehended. When he manages to sit upright, he finds a teenage girl standing over him, maybe sixteen or seventeen and a head taller than Mabel, sheepishly rubbing an arm as her crimson eyes dim. Where she pushes up the sleeve of her fuzzy, black jacket, he can see that her arm is lined with tattoos of unfamiliar symbols. In further defiance of the warmth of the evening, she wears a black knit cap over her braided brown hair. Henry thinks the white lettering on it spells out a band name, but it's hard to tell since most of it is crossed out as part of the design. “Sorry about that," she says. "Just a bit on edge, all things considered.”_

_"Um... n-no problem," is Henry's automatic response. He looks around for Mabel and is relieved to see her being helped up by another stranger, this one a scruffy, middle-aged man wearing threadbare overalls and a grey, sleeveless shirt. There's an unusual gentleness to the gesture, as though the man thought Mabel frail._

_Surrounding them all would be an ordinary living room if not for the fact that it is crawling with gargoyles: one riding the ceiling fan, three perched on a banister leading upstairs, several milling about around their feet._

_This is probably the fifth weirdest situation Henry’s unexpectedly found himself in with Mabelthis month. 4_

_Henry is careful not to step on any of the creatures as he edges past them to the fallen bike, lying sprawled on the ground where it'd collided with the back doorstep and flung them inside. He notes with mild astonishment that the world outdoors is considerably cooler, the sun having already yielded the sky to the shy stars beginning to wink into view, and composed of a small, fenced backyard featuring a container garden of cherry tomatoes rather than the base of the hill they'd left behind. A quick inspection of his phone tells him nearly two hours have passed in the interim (he supposes magic can only be so convenient). When he picks up the bike, its bell dings in what he takes to be an expression of gratitude and the kickstand digs into the doormat of its own accord. Huh. You learn something new every day._

_“You guys caught my message?” The question turns Henry's attention back to the living room, where Mabel, eyes still the wrong color, is talking with the two strangers._

_The girl nods, pulling from her pocket a purple origami butterfly, slightly crumpled, still slowly flexing its wings. This group must be the "backup" Mabel mentioned calling for. “Where’s Wendigo?” she asks._

_“Hunting the Terrorsque,” Mabel says._

_“Still?”_

_“The crocodemon hunter was her favorite show, I don’t think she’ll give up on trying to avenge him anytime soon. Where’s Rei?”_

_“Covering for me. That spell that lets us split ourselves into two? Turns out it stacks with illusions. It’s been helpful since our parents have been a lot stricter on us since Rei lost those fingers. Who’s this?” Henry feels the hairs rise on his neck as he looks the girl in those red, red eyes and suddenly feels hot, feels like he’s going to lose his balance, feels like just a nudge could send him over the edge into—_

_“This is the Woodsman!” The girl’s attention shifts to Mabel and the feeling passes as abruptly as it came over him. “Could you tone it down a little for him?”_

_“Oh! Sure, sure. This is the guy?” The girl looks back toward him in surprise and he braces for that feeling again, but nothing comes. Besides, her eyes are a pale blue, not red, just as Mabel's pupils have not, in fact, been replaced by solid white. Henry wonders if he’s begun to lose it, but only briefly as the girl is reaching out to give him a bone-crushing handshake despite his larger hands. “Good to meetcha,” she says with a smile. “We’ve heard soooooo much about you from Star.”_

_While Henry is certainly aware of Mabel's... extracurricular activities, up until this point he's never been personally involved. “Who, um, can I ask your names or, is that not allowed?”_

_“Call me Verwaul.”_

_“And I’m Buddy.” At a sharp glare from the girl, the man hunches his shoulders and scrambles to amend this statement. “I mean, oh I’m sorry, I said the wrong thing, I’m—”_

_“This is Dogbreath,” the girl answers for him._

_"I thought I was Maddog."_

_"No, you've got to work your way up to that."_

_Dogbreath(?) cocks his head. "Says who? ... That doesn't sound like a thing Dreambender'd care about."_

_Before Verwaul can respond, the gargoyle on the ceiling fan drops down onto an arm of the couch to face Henry. Where most of the swarming creatures are a stony grey, this one is an odd, golden mutt with a squat, muscular body like a bulldog and a blocky head like a pittbull. A bullbull? He’ll save that thought for Mabel later. In its long fingers it grasps a shield, insignia too worn to be easily made out. “We do not bother with names,” it says in a voice like a metal spatula scraping against a skillet, “but for the sake of introduction I will tell you what we are. We are protectors against evil spirits.”_

_“We’re on our way to rescue an evil spirit, actually,” Henry points out, after a moment of internal deliberation._

_“No. The current Dreambender is not evil. Common mistake.” The gargoyle waves a spindly hand and, is it puffing out its chest a bit? “It is okay that you cannot tell. It is our duty and purpose to spot such things, not yours. If humans could detect evil within the hearts around them, they would not need us to protect their dwellings.”_

_Dogbreath is staring—not at Henry, but around him, at the bike. It looks like he wants to say something, but it takes some time before he does. His voice is oddly meek for a man of his age and stature, words always coming in bitten-off chunks, implying not difficulty but hesitation, as though he were fully expecting to be chastised for speaking. “You guys took the shortcut… without the Wendigo… and ended up at my house? That's not... how it worked last time. Did something happen?”_

_Mabel shrugs, looking strangely pleased with herself. “Yeah, we must have gotten knocked off course a bit near the end there. But it’s a neat coincidence, right? Saves time!”_

_“Alright, well… where do you need me? I’m yours until two A.M.”_

_“Can you give us a ride?”_

_…_

_“Jamie didn’t take the car?” Mabel asks, climbing into the back of the SUV after Henry. Verwaul is riding shotgun; most of the gargoyles swirl in the air above like a murder of crows while a handful, including the band’s apparent leader, cling to the edges of the open sunroof._

_“No, she had volunteering at the juvenile facility with her mother today... and they’re going out for karaoke later,” Dogbreath says, adjusting the seat and mirrors. The little air freshener shaped like an evergreen hanging from the rearview mirror promises “Vanillaroma”, but all Henry can smell is takeout and gym socks. “That means I’ve got her phone too... I hope you like Fitz and the Tantrums... That's not sarcasm or anything, I haven't got insincerity figured out quite yet... I honestly can’t tell what sounds good to you people.”_

_Mabel leans forward to shake the driver’s seat, making Dogbreath jump. “Forget that, look at you! Driving and speaking in complete sentences! Takes most of us years to do that.”_

_“Yeah…” Dogbreath says, sounding dejected as he pulls out onto the road. There’s an unpleasant jolt when he crosses a line of train tracks too fast on his way out of the neighborhood. "Oh, um, I think there are some bags of cheddar goldfish back there somewhere... y'know, if you want..."_

_Henry leans over to Mabel, who is already digging around in the side door for the snacks, and whispers, “I’m a little out of the loop.” While the lack of formality and expectation among the unfamiliar bunch has done much to calm his nerves, there's still the pressing matter of what comes next._

_She whispers back over her shoulder, "So okay, you usually pick your own dumb alias but we needed something to call you when we talk about you around our, um, accomplices, y’know, wouldn't want to put you in any danger, and Wendigo, I told them the two of you are related so I thought, what other titles start with ‘W’ and sound badass? And it just sort of came to me—”_

_“I don’t mean that so much as... what's our game plan? For rescuing Dipper.”_

_“Oh! Well I sent out a message to V-waul about calling the gargoyles together before we left. She and her friend Reiboryn got swarmed by a mass of them this one time who mistook them for evil spirits and now they’re in their debt for that mistake or something. Garfolk are pretty proud when it comes to warding against evil, y’know?"_

_"Are they actually any good at it?"_

_"Well, they cleared Dipper, but also me, so they're batting about fifty-fifty I would say."That gets a laugh out of him and she smiles. 5 "Still, I’m gonna need these guys to take on Dipper’s nightmares.” _

_Henry feels his heart skip a beat and promptly drops his own smile. “We’re going to_ fight _Dipper?”_

_"Maybe! Don't freak out. Are you freaking out? Listen, I’m sure he can hold out until we get there. We’re lucky—Dipper haaaaaaaates being told what to do. I’ll bet you anything he’ll be able to resist twice as long as your typical demon.” She suddenly raises her voice. “Colder!”_

_Dogbreath turns right the first chance he gets, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror. “How about now?”_

_“Getting warmer again, thanks!”_

_Henry doesn't get a chance to find words for his concerns before the music is turned up so loud he feels the bass thrum through him like a heartbeat and the girls are singing along. He finds himself persuaded to join in soon enough, despite his many reservations surrounding the quality of his singing voice. "It's Informer, Henry, you can't go wrong with Informer!" Dogbreath remains unenthused the majority of the ride, not even so much as tapping his fingers, though when Verwaul reaches to take the wheel and swerve to the beat, he lets her. He draws the line, however, when she goes to play more Mindless Self Indulgence._

_"It's making me anxious."_

_"You're always anxious."_

_"It's my car," he says, and the tone he uses is cold enough to pry Henry's attention from the transient scenery. Nothing until this point has so much as suggested that Dogbreath possesses a spine._

_"No, it's Jamie's car," she says conversationally, "and she doesn't know you're using it because you haven't told her anything. Because you’re a coward.”_

_The car brakes too suddenly, throwing all passengers forward and tossing a few gargoyles airborne as Dogbreath turns, pulling into the deserted parking lot of a gas station. He levels a venomous glare at Verwaul, baring his teeth, and Henry is readying himself to intervene._

_Mabel taps Verwaul's shoulder with a small white bag—the goldfish crackers. "If you stop trying to pick a fight, I'll give you the rest," she says casually._

_As Verwaul takes it, Dogbreath softens, relaxing his white-knuckled grip on the wheel. "I wish you wouldn't do that," he says without a trace of the anger from a moment before, although he sounds resigned, briefly resting his forehead against the steering wheel._

_Verwaul looks away, out the window. "Could’ve just let me have it." She sounds almost disappointed. "I wouldn't have been mad. I know you wanted to, I can tell. I just made it a little easier for you, that's all."_

_Dogbreath... there's no other word for it, Dogbreath snorts. "It's bad to hurt people.... I'm not bad."_

_"It wouldn't have hurt."_

_"You know what I mean." Dogbreath steps out of the car. He checks his pockets. Then he turns, rests his elbows on the window. "You guys want anything from here?"_

_Henry's mind surprises him by wandering tocigarettes, 6 but he shakes his head. _

_Once Dogbreath disappears inside, Verwaul turns to look between Mabel and the disgruntled gargoyles returning to their perch. “What did I tell you guys? Repressed rage.”_

_Mabel huffs. “That doesn’t mean he’s evil.”_

_Verwaul rolls her eyes._

_Henry blinks. “He’s evil? I thought he was a friend of yours.”_

_“Er, he is, but—”_

_“We’ve got this running debate about which breed of cadejo Dogbreath is,” Verwaul tells Henry conspiratorially, tapping at her phone and then showing it to him. Loading slowly on the screen is a series of comments, the web page’s url a lengthy string of nonsensical characters._

_TheWendigo : Gotta side with Star on this one. If he were Evil, he’d have killed Jamie by now. _

_TheWendigo : Case closed. _

_TheDreambender : He could be Evil and fighting it. We’re not arguing that he’s not an ally, we’re arguing about his nature, what he’s inclined to do. _

_TheNightstalker : You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, demon? _

_TheDreambender : How is Alison still getting in here?_

_TheDreambender : I banned her IP address. And blew up her computer._

_TheNightstalker : You will not be rid of me so easily._

_TheWendigo : Dude, lay off, she’s cool. _

_TheDreambender : She tried to kill me. _

_TheWendigo **:** Yeah, see what I mean? _

_ItRhymesWithTable : Okay but why do we need to know ‘his nature’, huh? _

_ItRhymesWithTable : Besides, if he were Evil, he’d tell us. _

_TheDreambender : Right, he’d tell a bunch of known exorcists and monster hunters he’s Evil. I’m sure even he realizes that’s a bad idea. _

_ItRhymesWithTable : You guys shouldn’t be talking bad about him behind his back, that’s messed up. Jamie says he's a good boy, that's all we need to know._

_TheDreambender : Pretty sure Jamie isn't seeing what I'm seeing. What’d the gargoyles think, Rei? _

_TheJabberwock : They’re split right down the middle. It’s a fifty percent chance. _

_TheDreambender : Helpful._

_ChiuOnThis! : My newest vorpal prototype can cut through anything Evil._

_THEGRENDINATOR : ALSO MOST GOOD AND UNALIGNED THINGS. IT'S VERY EFFECTIVE!_

_ChiuOnThis! : When can he come by?_

_TheDreambender : Let's put a pin in that plan for now._

_ChiuOnThis! : :(_

_TheDreambender : Would you like to give that new blade of yours a taste of lich instead?_

_ChiuOnThis! : :)_

_TheDreambender : Give me a summon tomorrow around noon. Have a few glass bottles and some five finger grass on hand. Methinks Mr. Anderson isn't getting away this time!_

_ChiuOnThis! : :Lich hunt!_

_TheDreambender : Lich hunt!!!_

_THEGRENDINATOR : LICH HUNT!!!!!_

_ItRhymesWithTable : Okay, so today I went with him to apologize to that witch whose familiar he chased, she said there’s no such thing as an Evil cadejo. READ IT AND WEEP, GOOD BUDDY 4EVER!! _

_TheDreambender : A witch would say anything to avoid having to clean up her mess. She probably doesn’t even know how to uncurse him. _

_Henry is startled out of reading by the sound of the driver’s side door opening. Verwaul scrambles to get the phone back into her pocket as Dogbreath climbs back in, slamming the door unnecessarily hard behind him. The man wordlessly tears into some jerky he bought, then they’re hitting the road again._

_As they zero in on Dipper's location, they have to turn the music down so that Mabel's frequent revisions to their course can be audible. Henry isn't sure whether he's prepared to hear some of the conversations that take place in the car at this point in their journey, but he's known for some time the day would come where he would learnwhat sort of world he's getting into_. _7_

_"How’s the anger management class going?”_

_“Not great. It’s all about, okay, realizing your behavior is a choice, right, and choosing correctly. ‘Really think, why would your response to being asked to sharpen a pencil for someone be to want to do so and then thrust it into their eyesocket? Do you really gain anything from that course of action?’ How am I supposed to tell this guy ‘yes, I get to watch my enemy writhe in agony at my feet’? It’s like, they expect you to be acting out to get attention or because you’ve been treated unfairly or some other legitimate reason, but no, we’re actually awful, nobody gets that.”_

 

[ _"On the one hand, I don’t think I could take it. Constantly looking back and asking, is this what he would have been doing, had things gone differently? There's no way to know. No matter how much I think about it, there's no answer._

_On the other, I don't think I can say: I'm not him. I don't think I can say: he's dead. That can’t be the whole truth._

_Is that worse? If there is no difference, no change, and this is who I've been all along. What if all the things I've done are me, and not the specter of some dead demon?_

_What if I have no excuse?_

_..._

_Wow okay, I didn't mean to go and dump that on you, I haven't been able to be like, around people like this until recently, and it's just sort of been eating at me and—"_

_"No, I hear that. I'm sure you know more about how SA affects people than we do, but me n' TJ figured... the potential has to be there, y'know?”_

_“Magic doesn't come from nothing, it feeds on what's already there.”_

_“Right, right, so maybe we'd never have realized if it weren't for, you know, what happened to us, but it's still just us, right? Maybe if we were better people those things wouldn't have been able to sort of, to take root, y’know?"_

_"That’s what I'm afraid of. That's exactly it."_

_"Well, I don’t know if that’s true, but seems to me the only thing at stake there is: how much of this is our fault? And y'know, if we've learned nothing else from group therapy it's that that's a pretty typical human thing to wonder about."_

_"... Fuck."_

_"What, what is it?"_

_"Mabel was right. We should form a support group."_

_(laughs) "Isn't she always?"_ ]

 

_“You’re not awful! You just, you get antsy and need to break things and, y'know, sometimes there’s a person caught in the crossfire. Dreambender gets like that.”_

_“How’s he doing? With the bloodlust I mean.”_

_“Well, he does like to take things apart, but I don't know about any bloodlust. I've never gotten that kind of sense from him, not like with you guys. No offense!”_

_“Trust me, Star, I felt it for myself. Your brother’s rage, compared to ours… those ghosts, remember, their feud went back for centuries upon centuries, the intensity of it tore furrows through us and we still walk around with the damage of holding onto it as long as we did, but even still… it was like flicking a pair of matches into the sun. I think if we’d had the capacity to be, we would have been terrified. I would never have imagined it was possible for anyone to be so angry. For something to have happened, for someone to have done something, that could possibly_ deserve _that much anger. You can’t tell me he can keep a thing like that under wraps.”_

_“Well… he’s got a bit of a short fuse at times, but that’s not… entirely new. He's a lil' shook up, a lil' worse for wear, both of us, really, but, and he's not around to get on my case about names when I say this, he's still Dipper. Y'know?”_

_“I believe you and all, but... look, I know this isn't what you want to hear, and maybe I_ am _projecting a little, but please. Please. Be careful, okay? A dormant volcano is still a volcano. I wouldn’t want to be in the vicinity when he goes off."_

_"He wouldn't. He won't."_

_"Would, wouldn't. I think it's more of a when."_

_"Well! Hopefully by then you'll be experts on how to deal. Any tips for me to pass along?"_

_"... You know what’s been really good for us? Painting.”_

_“Painting?”_

_“Painting.”_

_“Tell me about the painting.”_

_“It’s like, every time you’re upset and want to start shit with someone, you start painting how you feel instead and promise yourself you can still go through with it once you’re done. And once you’re finished, you ask yourself if you’re still angry. But by then you’ve calmed down, every time… that sounds stupid, doesn't it?”_

_"No, it doesn't! No, it doesn't. What kind of stuff do you like to paint?"_

_Eventually, the only way to continue in the direction Mabel indicates is by foot. Mabel tells him they'll be fine, that they can handle this, that he can wait in the car if he likes, but this is the woman Henry loves._

_Here is what Henry has learned: while many would argue otherwise, love can only ever be an action, not a feeling. Professing to love someone is a lot more convenient than demonstrating it; someone who does the former and not the latter is asking for trust they haven't earned._

_This is the woman Henry loves, and he's going to prove it._

_He gets out of the car._

_He is immediately plowed into by Wendy's bike, which has apparently been trailing them this entire time. Henry tells it to stay by the car and it obediently deploys its kickstand._

_The party has only gone a few steps onto the hiking trail when they see it: a flickering blue ball of flame in the distance between the trees. Henry has heard of wanderlights, knows from stories they will try to lead you off your path and into the unknown, but before he can voice his suspicion Mabel is already jogging after it. “C’mon guys, they’ll show us a shortcut!” Dogbreath and Verwaul follow hot on her heels as the gargoyles wing their way ahead. Henry hesitates, then reminds himself that this is Mabel's area of competence, not his, and he follows._

_The will-o-wisp vanishes once Mabel is near enough to reach out and touch it. A branch curls round from a nearby bigleaf maple and Henry prepares himself to push her out of the way, but it merely pats Mabel slowly on the shoulder. She turns and the branch straightens out, pointing. Mabel thanks it and they continue on in that direction._

_It does not dawn on Henry until they are balancing on a fallen redwood to cross a brook, listening to it helpfully bubble their next set of directions at them, that his initial reaction was not, in fact, misguided. He watches Mabel march relentlessly forward, eyes fixed on a destination that would be reached without fail, obstacle after dangerous obstacle falling to the wayside without a struggle. It’s as if whatever welcome wagon there was is now desperately trying either to get out of her way or to ingratiate itself. Begging the questions: what sort of reputation does his girlfriend have in this world, and what would have happened had someone else wandered this way? Better not to think about it, really._

_As dusk falls, Dogbreath sits on his haunches before a pair of loose dogs, who shake their heads and sneeze in his face, whining softly. “They say there’s some... loud, obnoxious person at the Witch’s Castle.”_

_“Sounds like Morlayna alright,” Mabel says, hand to her chin. “Wait… Witch’s Castle? Oh, this is one of the places that used to be on Dipper’s list! I remember because he made such a big deal about taking it off.”_

_This is hardly Henry's first time hearing of Dipper's penchant for list-making; he can guess which one she means. “Why’d he do that?”_

_“Turns out that despite its cool name, it’s really just an abandoned restroom or something. Killed his excitement pretty quick.”_

_Dogbreath turns back to the dogs. “If you come with us, we’ll help you shut her up.” Henry doesn’t hear any reply, but when they start moving again, one of the dogs trails behind them while the other dashes ahead, leading their tiny army onward._

_It seems to Henry that the deeper they travel into these woods, the more they have begun to resemble the forests he remembers from children's books and fairytales—an ever-present atmosphere of danger, strange and otherworldly residents, unnavigable without a guide. He is hardly surprised, then, to find a witch’s castle at the end of their journey._

_Castle may be too generous an appellation.Witch, too, but he'll get to that. 9 The building in the middle of the clearing ahead looks more like a pile of mossy stones fit together by a child trying to build a gingerbread house who was then called away before he could finish. It is a squat thing, two stories, but roofless, with a pair of iron rods set into one side to keep unlikely visitors from tumbling off the exposed second level. As they peer out at it from behind a wide tree, they can see two figures standing up there; one animated and griping, the other hovering, limp. _

_Dipper Pines floats like a slightly deflated balloon, expression pained in much the same way Henry imagined he looked when Mabel was playing her music too loud in the house. His body is crawling with an electric mesh, snapping and crackling over his suit and skin, as though he were a fly caught in some sort of living spiderweb._

_The person beside him… hearing her title hadn’t adequately prepared Henry for the startling amount of tomato red assaulting his eyes—from her coat, her top, her slouchy leather pants, her lipstick, her fingernails, and, of course,_ of course _, her pointy hat—to say nothing of the bright ball of flame she holds in one hand, throwing it up and catching it carelessly as though it were no more than a tennis ball. She has a cellphone to her ear and, thanks to her shouting, they can hear her plain as day. “No, I'm telling you, I really got him this time! I can have him port you here to see for yourself if you tell me where you are… No… No, this is not another trick, I— Look, I can see why you'd think... Uh-huh... No, listen to me, I’m serious!”_

_Henry retrieves hispocket knife, 10 wondering if it’ll be enough to cut Dipper loose, but Mabel is already putting a hand on his shoulder. “You have to stay here,” she says, and Henry has never heard her sound so… dispirited. “I really wanted to believe she couldn't do it, but…” She shakes her head, eyes fixed on her brother. “I'm not getting anything from him anymore, I don't think he's conscious. And if you go out there, Morlayna will tell him to kill you.” _

_“She'd really do something like that? She doesn't even know me.”_

_“You’re human. That's enough. Morlayna hates humans.”_

_Henry risks another peek at the short, angry woman. “Morlayna_ is _human.”_

_“Right? Unfortunately, we've learned those aren’t mutually exclusive.”_

_“What about you?”_

_“Dipper can’t kill me,” she assures him._

_“We are too powerful,” Verwaul agrees._

_“You’re staying here with Henry.”_

_“What?!” Verwaul says and all, including the gargoyles, shush her._

_“You’re too young to go toe-to-toe with a demon, okay, me and the garfolk can take care of it.”_

_“You guys didn’t let that stop you!”_

_“Yeah, and have you seen what that got us lately?” Mabel says, rapidly gesturing from herself to Dipper and back again. “Dead. If I let what happened to us happen to_ you, _I’d be the absolute worst.”_

_“What about Dogbreath, huh? He’s six!”_

_Mabel shrugs. “That’s like forty in his years.”_

_“It’s true,” Dogbreath chimes in._

_Verwaul is shaking now, and her eyes are bright in that way that makes Henry's blood pressure spike and his breathing go funny and his vision tint crimson and—_

_The moment he notices, he averts his eyes, not wanting to get caught in… whatever that's about. “But… but! To stay behind in your time of need, when you who gave us our lives are in peril… it would be the height of cowardice.” She spits that last word like it’s poisonous. “Inexcusable. I could never show my face to Reiboryn again.”_

_“Careful, Very, your words.”_

_“Damn my words, sorceress, let me fight,” she fumes, stamping a foot._

_Mabel puts a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry. Next time, okay?"_

_"Unbelievable," Verwaul mutters, but to Henry’s surprise she doesn't argue further._

_Dogbreath steps forward. “I’m going to shadow you, just in case. Say the word and I'm there.”_

_Mabel nods to him, then motions the gargoyles in for a huddle. "I’m gonna draw her attention, because I have so many words I’ve been rehearsing for her in my head and I want to remember to say at least a third of them, and also because the nightmares won’t hurt me. You guys see if you can swoop in and get Dipper away from her while she's distracted. He's always grousing about how mediocre she is with magic, so once he's out of the picture, it should be safe to take her down.” Here she punches a fist into her palm._

_Without taking comments, Mabel rushes out and up the stairs to the second level of the castle to stand in the doorway. "Let the demon go now and I won't have to kick your butt,” she announces without a hint of her typical playfulness, straight-faced and dead-serious._

_Morlayna, interrupted mid-outburst, spares Mabel an irritated glance. "Take care of that, would you?" she says, returning to her phone call as Dipper stirs. His face is eerily placid now as he casts Mabel a sidelong glance. From the long shadows cast by the old building, all manner of demons begin to materialize. A six-armed ogre, an eye-studded wraith, a multi-mouthed tangle of miscellaneous beasts—spines, horns, tongues, teeth, and all with eyes yellow as dandelions._

_"Yeah so some hero showed up just now to stop me, that serious enough for you? You're gonna miss it, but here's her dying screams." Morlayna holds out the phone in Mabel's direction and Henry feels himself tense._

_Nothing happens. The horde of demons do not advance. Morlayna frowns, quickly bringing the phone back up to her ear. "Hey, they uh, killed her instantly and it made this huge mess, call you back." She lowers it, staring around her at the assembled horrors, perplexed. “This was just working a minute ago,” she says softly to herself, as though Mabel were the gentleman from IT and the demons were her connection to the shared network drive._

_“Knock it off, Morlayna!”_

_Morlayna looks at Mabel—really looks at her, this time. “Do I know you?”_

_“You should!” Mabel jabs a thumb toward her chest. “I’m one half of the Mystery Twins.”_

_Recognition sparks in the warlock’s black eyes, detestation hot on its heels. “Oh, I’ve heard of you,” she sneers. “The human who brought a demon to heel, carries him around in her shadow. Couldn’t stand the thought of someone surpassing you, huh, that why you’ve come to stop me?”_

_“No! I’m coming to stop you for the demon’s sake, this is a rescue mission plain and simple. Now let him go.”_

_“You don’t understand how important this is for me!” Morlayna snaps, stepping toward Dipper protectively. “The other warlocks always make fun of me, ‘oh Morlayna, you still haven’t bound yourself to anybeing? Maybe you’re just afraid of commitment.’ Doubting me, like I’m any less of a warlock than them just because I haven’t enticed the right spirit yet! While the showoffs run around flaunting their abilities in my face, turning into deer and making flowers grow or parting the rain around them so they don’t get wet while carrying their books... I was so close with this one, and it’s a demon, a POWERFUL demon, I’m thinking that’ll show the rest of ‘em right? Come to find out today he suddenly doesn’t want to see me anymore! So I say, fine, no more Miss Nice Warlock, I’ll take the plunge and be a Dark Lord instead. But even now that I’ve enthralled him, and we’re talking a good four-five hours of work here, I hope you appreciate"—Mabel nods, appreciatively—"I’ve come to find out I still can’t bind him to me! I know what you’re thinking and it’s not that I’ve done it wrong, okay, I’ve checked my work, and he’s never mentioned anyone else, why would he keep answering my summons if there were someone else, right?, like, clearly I caught his eye for a reason, he was just waiting for me to impress him, so what I’m saying is, politely, what the hell? Why isn’t it working? ARGH! This has been the worst day ever! Nothing I do goes right!”_

_Mabel, looking stunned at the sudden outburst, for once does not say anything._

_Morlayna rubs her hands over her face, then pauses. “Wait a second…” Her fingers part around her widening eyes and she stares at Mabel. Then she points a finger at her. “Ah! AAAAH! It’s you!!”_

_Mabel looks around, confused, then hesitantly points to herself. “Who, me?”_

_“Oh my god, it’s you! You’re so dead!!”_

_“Well yeah but—” Mabel yelps, diving out of the way of a destructive flash of light._

_The head gargoyle drops to her side. “I thought you said the warlock was unable to fight.”_

_“My bad! I didn’t think she was actually like, competent! She summons Dipper for evil’s sake!”_

_“I’ll say," he says, inspecting the charred stone where the lightning had struck. “Her aim is exceedingly poor.”_

_“Shut up shut up shut up shut up!” Morlayna rages, firing off bolt after bolt. Mabel dodges them one after the other as the rest of the gargoyles stream down from the trees to her aid only to come face to face with snarling demons, ambulatory once more._

_Henry watches fighting break out, trying to think of something he can do to assist even as Mabel and Morlayna argue._

_“Whatever powers he granted you, he did it to be nice! That doesn’t mean he wanted you to—”_

_“Silence! I’m not a charity case. He only wants to leave because you got to him somehow, convinced him he could be different. People like you always think creatures like him need to be purified and tamed. He’s a demon, it’s not natural!”_

_“You’re one to talk, you bound him! You’re giving him orders! Even polite requests can make his skin crawl, how sick to his stomach do you think he feels right now?”_

_“You all pushed me to this! You did it! And maybe once I've killed you, it’ll finally work!”_

_“Morlayna that’s a terrible idea!”_

_“That’s what_ he _always says, acting like he never liked my plans! Did he get it from you?”_

_Morlayna's spellcasting is briefly interrupted as the two dogs from the trail harrow her; she nearly transfigures one and kicks the other down the stairs. "Hey!" she shouts to Dipper, pointing at them. "Am I asking too much here?"_

_Dipper rolls his eyes and snaps his fingers and a lizard-like demon whose roar sounds astoundingly similar to a vacuum cleaner surges after the dogs, chasing them off. He continues regarding the struggle between Morlayna and Mabel, between monsters and gargoyles, with all the interest of flipping through channels at three in the morning when nothing tastes good and all the white noise blends together. There's something... dangerous about the demon's lack of interest, something Henry can’t quite put his finger on. Indifference, in his experience, had often meant safety, but seeing it in the demon... It's as though the only reason it hasn't killed them all outright is that it doesn't care enough to make a genuine effort to do so._

_It’s been some time since Henry’s felt this powerless, this helpless to do more than watch. Torn between wanting to help and not wanting to get in the way. This mission is simultaneously too important for him to jeopardize and too important for him to stick to the sidelines._

_Then: Dipper's eyes meet his from across the battlefield and they widen, just a fraction._

_Then: the world stops._

_All is silence and stillness, lifeless grey, so sudden a shift Henry would think he'd been struck deaf and colorblind at once._

_Heavy footsteps behind him shatter the impression before it's even fully formed. A snort. Henry turns and the points of a pair of sharp horns are pressed to his chest in warning. The creature to which they are attached is about the size of a rottweiler and looks to have been hastily crafted by an indecisive, and ultimately unimpressed, god. It is quadrupedal and sinuous, wearing a skin of fishlike scales of disparate sizes overlaid with thin, messy fur that grows denser near its head and extremities, patches of ineffectual feathers cropping up now and then along its spine and tail. Its legs, each too short and slender to quite fit the rest of its body, end in clawed, ratlike hands. Tufted ears swivel and twitch behind a bony, bullish head, featuring the aforementioned horns situated above a pair of burning, golden eyes._

_Verwaul, beside him just moments before, is nowhere to be seen._

_**"Huh... so that's how it's going to be** **,"** echoes a grating voice in Henry's ears, a buzzing at its edges that resonates deep in his bones and settles there, every word a corruption, an attack on his psyche. A voice that could only belong to Dipper Pines._

 

_Yeah, that's... my voice. This is, what, the second time you've ever heard me? Well. Mabel says it grows on you._

_But I don’t remember any of this._

_And my nightmares, they don't look like these things._

_... I don't understand what's going on._

 

_He doesn't dare turn. He barely dares to breathe._

**_"She hasn't told me to kill you,"_ ** _Dipper says,as though reading Henry's mind. 11 **"**_ ** _I'm_** **_surprised, too. Wasn't expecting that."_ **

_The horns ease backward a few inches; Henry understands and makes no move to flee. "Dipper, you still in there? Can you fight her off?"_

**_"_** **_Morlayna? That's not really important right now."_ **

_Dipper, what- what's going- what is-?_

**_"Yeah, I bet I'm not making a lot of sense to you, huh? But I want to give you this. It's only fair, y'know, and I think by the time it's your turn to burn, it'll be too late... you'll have already decided."_ **

_“What... are you giving me?”_

_Dipper laughs and Henry's blood turns to ice._ **_"A choice! One that'd make ol' Hobson proud."_ ** _The horns jab again into Henry._ **_"Would you like to die?"_ **

_Henry does not answer. Trembling with terror, heartbeat unnaturally loud in his ears for the silence, it's all he can do not to be sick right there on the spot._

**_"No pressure, feel free to think it over,"_ ** _Dipper continues affably, and Henry realizes with a jolt that the demon is utterly uninvested in either outcome._

_Henry, not trusting his voice, shakes his head._

**_"Suit yourself. I figured, but then you've already surprised me once today, haven't you?"_ ** _The creature's horns retract into its head and, slowly, it sinks into the ground, as if being slowly devoured by the earth._ **_"Hey! How's about I give you a hint for the road?"_ ** _Something Henry can only describe as a vision passes before his eyes, of Dipper tugging at the charged webbing in which he is still ensnared._ **_"This, would not be possible without"_ ** _—he points at a round object dangling from a cord around his neck—_ **_"This. I'd wish you luck, but who knows what she's going by these days."_ **

_And then the battle is resumed, color returned, Verwaul back at his side and still cursing faintly under her breath as she watches with him. When Henry looks back around at the castle, Dipper's eyes are on the melee, just as bored as before. And there, around his neck... nothing. As though what had just transpired never happened. Henry knows better._

_He rubs away the goosebumps that had risen along his bare arms. The brief exchange should have put him out of commission, would do so, he could feel it, but that's for later. He can't afford a breakdown right now._

_If only he knew magic, knew some way to help, if only he were more like..._

_He's seen Mabel use magic, now and again, and with such ease that she made it look unremarkable, even natural. He'd asked questions, here and there. How did you do that? Where did you learn? She'd laughed. "I didn't! I have no idea what I'm doing. Trust me, Dipper's the one who can explain how this stuff works. He's tried to do that for me, y'know, tell me what magic is and what it's not, what magic can do and what it can't, but... I like to feel it out for myself. If he came along and told me all the rules, he'd be robbing that exploration from me, ruining the surprise. It wouldn't be magic anymore, y'know? At least, not to me. And there's magic in everything, Henry. All you have to do is find it. That's what makes it fun!"_

_Henry looks around, but he has nothing at hand from which to draw inspiration. Nothing except himself._

_But that isn't true. He was not alone in coming here. Even when the Pines twins had no allies to call on, no friends upon which to depend, they had one another. So: what does Henry have?_

_He already knows._

_Next question: how can hecall to something without a name? 12_

_Henry puts his fingers to his lips and whistles, long-drawn and commanding, and while the demons and gargoyles locked in combat do not pause, his summons echoes impossibly outward, carrying on and on and only gaining speed._

_Then the sound of tires on trail as Wendy's bike bursts through the brush behind them, turning to stop by Henry's side._

_"You've got a plan," Verwaul says._

_Henry nods and mounts the bike. "You're not going to like it."_

_"There are plenty of things about this situation that I'm sure I like less."_

_"We're going to run away."_

_To Henry’s surprise, it isn’t this part of the plan she opposes so much as another._

_“You want me to_ what _?”_

_..._

_Henry rides along the perimeter of the clearing, Verwaul clinging tightly to him from behind as he pushes the bicycle to the fastest pace he can maintain. As they pass, she calls out to the demons, goading and taunting, her supernatural charisma sufficiently distracting them long enough for several gargoyles to gain the upper claw. As Henry anticipated, large swaths of the demons abandon defending Morlayna and Dipper altogether to chase after them._

_Unanticipated is the sudden urge to lash out at Verwaul himself. Henry's surprised at how strong it comes on, so much so it nearly topples them. He has always been slow to anger; more than temperament, he's been at the mercy of the quick-tempered too long to ever feel comfortable adopting behavior that would put him in their company. And yet the things Verwaul says or... no, it's the_ way _she says them, it tears into him, grasps through him, looking for something cruel, something kindred. It finds it. It calls to it, trying to dredge it up to the surface. Henry grits his teeth and keeps his eyes forward, channeling the raw emotion into speed._

_Round and round the castle they ride, weaving in and out of the trees. Demons on their tail reach and lunge, Henry swerves and corners and the near-misses are simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating._

_They won’t catch him. Not unless he wants to be caught._

_Even with the way his bike barely seems to touch the ground despite their combined weight, even with its supernatural speed, he’s never ridden so fast. His chest is burning. His legs are burning. Everything is burning, though that makes no sense. There’s sweat dripping into his eyes and smearing his glasses._

_Henry does not want to be caught._

_So he isn’t._

_With the help of a few gargoyles, Mabel now has Morlayna pinned to the ground, arms behind her back. “Tell him he can stop, tell him you’re letting him go!”_

_“Nev… er.”_

_Mabel nods to the stone creatures and several reach out with long fingers. Henry has seen that diabolical technique before, used against him once by Mabel, Wendy, Grenda, and Candy acting together._ Tickle torment. _Morlayna howls with laughter, fighting to squirm but held firm by the gargoyles. It wouldn't take long for her to break, if they can just keep the demons occupied a few minutes longer..._

_Verwaul levels a finger-gun over Henry’s shoulder and fires some sort of strange pink pulse, close enough for Henry to feel the heat singe his eyebrows, at a drove of demons trying to head them off, scattering them and clearing a path._

_“I just want to say,” she says suddenly, in that odd, overly formal tone she’d taken with Mabel earlier, “that it’s been an honor. I hardly know you and I can already tell you’re one of the bravest warriors I've ever met. And I am saddened to know we will not get the opportunity to get to know one another better.”_

_“What are you talking about?”_

_She taps him on the shoulder and points up at the castle._

_Henry looks, sees Dipper glaring at them, eyes swallowed entirely by amber light._

_“I told you,” Verwaul says—not bitter or biting, just a plain statement of fact. “I told you, he’s going to kill us. No one pisses off a thing like that and lives.”_

_Henry’s mouth goes dry. “Morlayna hasn’t told him to kill us, she’s too busy with Mabel and the gargoyles. He can’t harm us himself unless she does.”_

_Verwaul laughs hollowly, as though Henry had suggested they try to hold back an avalanche with their bare hands._

_Henry turns again to check Mabel’s progress just in time to see Morlayna escape, scrambling to her feet to aim a sparking finger at his girlfriend._

_"Die, die!" both Morlayna and Mabel shout._

_"Jinx!" Mabel appends triumphantly, leaving Morlayna to silently howl with rage. "Maybe that’ll teach you not to steal someone else’s catchphrase. Quick guys, while she can't tell him to do anything!"_

_Four gargoyles leap to badger Dipper, holding his hands behind his back, straining to pull him up into the air and away with them, and far from being bored now Dipper is starting to crisp, a darkness at the fringes devouring his human shape, form starting to bubble and pop as though he’ll melt his way out of their grasp. And, as his suit dissolves to void, something is uncovered, swinging from what had once been his neck._

"I wouldn’t want to be in the vicinity when he goes off."

_"Mabel!" Henry shouts, raising his voice for the first time in years. "The thing around his neck!"_

_Mabel's head snaps around to Dipper, then behind her. "Fetch!" she barks._

_A german shepherd Henry hasn’t seen before appears, seemingly from the shadows, loping past Mabel, past the neutralized demons, pounding hard, fear fueling every step. Then it lunges, a brilliant flying leap straight toward the dream demon, and it’s as if the world has shifted into bullet time_

_Its jaws close around the thing at Dipper’s neck and the cord snaps_

_In an instant_

_The battle is over._

_The demons glitch, as if the world had gotten dust in its cartridge, and then slowly fade away. The gargoyles disengage, the german shepherd panting into the prone Dipper’s face as it lies atop his torso, the weird electric mesh that had surrounded him fizzling out. The lone remaining demon blinks hard and stares up at the dog in recognition, his antipathy evaporating as quickly as his nightmares. “… Buddy?”_

_The dog licks him in the face with a desperate, happy whine, its tail going a million miles an hour._ I’m so happy you’re safe! _says some echo of Dogbreath. Henry has no idea how he heard that, the same way he has no idea why, when he pedals over and the girls look at him, at each other, already rejoicing, red has replaced blue and white, black. He has no idea why what he could have sworn was a german shepard, now that he looks again, has horns curling out of the top of its head or fur the color of soot or eyes like burning coals, the odd sound of its footsteps as it bounds off of Dipper drawing him to the fact that it’s got hooves like a deer instead of paws. Here is what Henry has learned, somewhere between the beginning of this adventure and its end:these things do not matter nearly as much as he thought they did. 13_

_Morlayna swallows audibly, anxiously twiddling her fingers._

_Dipper stares at her past an elated Buddy and says, “Yeah so Morlayna, I’ve been meaning to tell you. It’s over.”_

 

_So Buddy has it. Just my luck, huh?_

_Dipper? What-what are you doing here?_

_Eating this memory. I’d normally grab the play-by-play from Mabel, but we’re trying out this new ‘personal space’ thing and I just figured, while it’s still nice and fresh—_

_WHAT?_

_Oh right, I forgot, it sounds bad when I put it that way. Hold on a sec while I think of another way to put it._

_Get out._

_Honestly it’s not half as bad as it sounds. Doesn’t hurt a bit._

_Get out get out get out get out GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT-_

_Fine! Look, I’m leaving, calm down. Yeesh._

 

* * *

_1 It's mating season._

_2 She dyed it just last Tuesday._

_3 His girlfriend likes to anthropomorphize things, even when they don't have souls._

_4 The time immediately before this, Henry had been tossing a penny into that water fountain shaped like a vomiting man when a hand had reached up and hauled him into the water. It turned out Mabel was just really excited to show him all her favorite shortcuts around town. That one in particular had transported him to a party at the hot mermaid cove. Those aren’t all they’re cracked up to be; the drinks were all watered down and he still hasn’t gotten all the sand out of his shoes._

_5 Mabel is presently wearing the sweater featuring the words “I am the evil twin."_

_6 It’s been years..._

_7_ _The nonchalance with which Mabel and Wendy refer tocatastrophic magical events secretly terrifies him. 8_

_8 “Has her brother always been. Like that?” _

_“Nah, believe it or not, he used to be even more of a tightass.”_

_“No, that's not—”_

_“I know, dude. I actually met them before all… (Wendy waves at nothing) this happened. You know the Transcendence? I mean, who doesn't, right? Well, and not a word of this leaves this town, but… that was all us.”_

_“Us?”_

_“Yeah, the whole town was invited to that particular party. Most people, they think of the Transcendence as this big thing, they give it a big name to go with, we're sure to see that on a movie poster someday. But here? It's just 'That Summer', specifically 'That Summer Dipper and Mabel came to town'. I don't really know or understand all_ _the details myself, you've met Soos so you know how he gets when he explains things, but basically this demon was planning on merging this meatworld with a hell dimension or whatever and…”_

_9_ _Mabel has explained warlockery to Henry thusly: “You know those little birds that supposedly go gallivanting into the open mouths of crocodiles to clean their teeth? It’s exactly like that.”_

_10 The one he uses to whittle._

_11 And is it such a stretch that he can?_

_12  Su, J-L. (2006). Whistling and its magico-religious tradition: a comparative perspective. Lingnan Journal of Chinese Studies _, 3, 14-44.__

_13 So his girlfriend’s eyes are different. Lots of things are different now. The mailbox tries to bite his hand when he goes for the mail. The subjects of the paintings on the library’s walls regularly escape their frames to intrude on others, requiring him to find and corral them. When he wakes up at night to go to the bathroom, he has to turn on the hallway lights to shoo away any lurking shadowy figures. _

_...He’s sure he can come up with a positive example if you give him some time._

 

 

`You’re making this so much harder to follow than it needs to be.`

` <'you' does not promise-> `

`Does not promise an ‘I’, I know, I heard you. You’re not a person, you’re a record, you’re a history, you’re a truth.`

`Except here’s the thing: `

`I don’t believe that.`

`What's it gonna take to get you to admit defeat here? You've had your chance to shake me, your eight seconds are up.`

`<so now you are the cowboy>`

`We can take turns.`

`<you misunderstand>`

` <this is not your mind> `

` <these are not your memories> `

` <this is not your decision> `

` <he doesn’t owe you anything> `

` I MADE it my decision. `

` <the selfishness of it> `

` <the arrogance of it> `

`Call me whatever you want. Once you say it, it’s true, right? `

`But fine, be that way. I've got my bearings now. Hop in the backseat, I'll take it from here.`

` <now you understand> `

` <you want these memories so badly?> `

` <prove it> `

`You’re on.`

 

 

**2-2-5-14**

"Good evening ladies, gentlemen, and others, I'm your fantabular host, Mabel Pines, and I welcome you to a very special episode of License to Cook. Today's lucky contestant is none other than my very own favorite brother, Dipper Pines." She leans forward, banging a hand on the table and narrowing her eyes. "Or is he? You see, folks, my brother's claim is as such." She looks to him expectantly.

"Mabel, I so appreciate this, really," Dipper says from his place at her side, "but it's not going to work."

"And how is that?" Mabel points the microphone (one of a set that came with her karaoke machine) in his face.

Dipper takes it and stands to address their (largely (Wobbles is in attendance)) notional audience. "Everyone, I... I have a confession to make." He discreetly presses a button on the keyboard in front of them and the audience gasps. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but I've known your host all my life and I'm not convinced she can come up with a recipe her future self hasn't already at some point forced down my throat." He hands the mic back.

Mabel stands herself, head bowed and eyes closed. "Friends, it seems I have come up against my most formidable foe yet... myself." She opens her eyes, raising a clenched fist. "Regardless! I'm willing to try." She sits in her chair, leaning back to let the absent applause roll over her as she rubs at her chin in thought. "Think imagination... what wouldn't Mabel do?"

...

"Is this... a punishment?"

He doesn't mean the bread alongside it, strategically cut up and arranged into the shape of Wobbles' face and ears, blueberries on banana for eyes and an apple slice for the nose ("To give you courage! He believes in you!").

"For what?"

No, the presentation, as always, is top notch. It's what is being presented that concerns him. Macaroni salad.

At least, he thinks that's what it was supposed to be, once upon a time. Dipper pokes at the pasta with a fork, clearing off what must be breadcrumbs but can't help but make him wonder what Mabel did with the rest of that kitty litter.

"You know, for that time I made us late to breakfast and we had to eat macaroni."

"Dipper, how petty do you think I am?" A good point, but he notes with due suspicion that she hasn't actually answered the question. "All you have to do is try it."

He brings up a forkful to his nose and barely restrains himself from recoiling from the strong scent of rotten eggs. He shovels it into his mouth quickly, before he can think, careful not to chew, and is confronted with an experience not unlike chugging mayonnaise straight from the container.

Mabel looks around. "Hm,” she says, after a pregnant pause. “Well, it doesn't look like the world's ending." She looks back to Dipper. "Is it good at least?"

Rather than answer her, Dipper takes another bite. It's just as disgusting as the first.

Then another.

And another.

Dipper holds out his empty bowl. "Could I get seconds?"

Mabel’s eyes grow wide. "It's… it’s really that good?" Then she is grabbing up the microphone, puffing up with pride. "Y'hear that, folks? Mabel Pines has done it again!"

Muffled thumping from downstairs, as of a broom handle against a living room ceiling. “Hey, you kids keep it down, I’m watching my soaps!”

...

"Can I ask you something?" Dipper asks as Mabel slips the invitation to her next cooking show (meant for Henry) under the broom closet door (she’s gonna make these cheesy jalapeño pancakes (Dipper can’t wait to watch Henry struggle to like them (Dipper can’t quite recall but is nonetheless certain that Henry’d had a low tolerance for spicy food until Mabel got her hands on him))).

“You just did!”

“Why are you so into this theory? I’d have thought you’d hate it, given what you said about the theories you eliminated.”

“The theories I what now?”

“You know, Dream and Afterlife Theory, you crossed ‘em out.”

“Nuh-uh! You would freak if I changed your parts of the journal without asking.”

Dipper groans. “Mabel that’s not funny. You know how I get.”

“I’m not messing with you, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It takes some searching (she hasn’t expended an ounce of her interminable creative energy on organization), but Dipper finally finds the spot in Mabel’s scrapbook corresponding to the day she met The Perfect Pig [sic]. He taps the spot between a picture of Stan flailing around in the water of the dunking booth while the crowd of onlookers laughs riotously and one of Wobbles and Mabel smiling at the camera (Mabel is pushing up a corner of Wobbles’ mouth with one-hand to produce the effect) while Dipper digs away obliviously in the background, his back to them. “Right here. When we were looking for magical hotspots. You said I’m always making theories about how something or other didn’t literally happen the way that we thought, like maybe it was actually all a dream or some other explanation, because I can’t accept happiness? I’m paraphrasing, but—”

“You totally do that!" Mabel exclaims, still eyeing the scrapbook contemplatively. "That does sound like something I would say... and I do want to take credit for it... Yeah, you’re right, I probably just forgot!”

“Yeah…" he says, as she tucks the book away again. "Anyway. What’s different about this one?”

Mabel pats his shoulder, the way she might Wobbles’ head. “Dipper, you’ve got this all twisted up. I hate those other theories so much because it’s like, every time something good happens you gotta be suspicious of it, you just do, even just the tiniest bit, thinking, oh, it can’t be real, oh, it must be temporary, or oh, you’re going to mess it up. And I don’t mean just in fiction! Like someone is nice to you or wants to be your friend, and then you go and write a theory about how it’s probably because it’s all a big joke and they’re gonna like, go hang out with their other friends later and laugh about all the crazy things you said.”

“But that’s a real thing that has happened to me, you were there. Lisa Brooks, sixth grade. You beat her up and got suspended, remember?” Why does he only remember the worst things, he doesn’t even care about that anymore, he swears—

Mabel shrugs. “Sure but that’s not the point, the point is that like, going through life expecting everything to have a punch line, to be a set up to pull something over on you…” She throws out her arms. “It’s just such a terrible way to live your life, dude!” She taps the side of her nose or, as she’s dubbed it, her Super Sniffer. “This theory doesn’t smell like one of those though. It reeks of one hundred percent Dipper-certified over-thought-out theorizing, not just something lazy you came up with to rationalize why ‘good thing’ is actually ‘this other, bad thing’ so you’re not allowed to enjoy it, y’know?” Mabel pauses to stroke her chin. “I should totally make some stamps,” she mutters to herself after a moment.

Dipper turns his head, throwing Mabel a sidelong glance. “Hmm. Not that I do that, because I don’t, but I can sort of see that, maybe, like out of the corner of my eye. You’re sure it’s got nothing to do with Henry?”

Mabel laughs a little too loudly (even for her), crossing her arms and leaning back against the broom closet. “What? No way. Henry who? Just call me Mystery Mabel!”

“Hey guys,” Henry says, walking up to them. “That’s, um, impressive,” he adds when Mabel gives a little shriek of surprise, jumping nearly a foot in the air. “I need to grab the broom out of there, you mind moving a second?”

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_He blanches, carefully prepared introduction forgotten. “You-you haven’t drawn…”_

_“Hmm?” says the middle-aged of the three women sitting on the couch of the dimly-lit living room, pausing her knitting to push up her glasses. “Oh, oh no, makes a mess of the floor and we couldn’t be bothered.” She nods toward the candle on the mantel. “Also, sorry we haven’t got but the one candle, they’ve got all sorts of rules these days about fire safety. We thought if we put a green bottle in front of the light’id help you get in the mood just the same.”_

_“… Thoughtful of you.” Dipper says._

_The eldest woman (perhaps the other’s mother?) picks up a notepad from the end table and squints at the handwriting through her thick reading glasses. “We’ve got some questions for you, demon. People keep coming to us for prophecies, y’know. We tell them, we don’t do that, you’ll be wanting a seer. But people these days, they can’t be concerned to look up the differences between your witches and your warlocks, wizards, magicians, sorcerers, seers- we’re a diverse bunch, ain’t we? But no no, they just assume we’re playin’ hard to get, that they’ve just got to up their offer! I ain’t got a use for a firstborn, keep ‘em!”_

_The youngest woman (perhaps the first’s daughter? The second’s granddaughter?) nods emphatically in agreement._

_Dipper could see it now. Witches. Three of them. Youngest (mostly yellows_ <an even mix of nervousness and anticipation> _), middle-aged (mainly greens_ <focused and fearless> _), eldest (primarily purple_ <distrustful and impatient> _). Some part of him knows this story, knows that’s just how it always goes._

_“Not even all human,” Green continues. “Got all sorts of trolls and druids wandering up here.”_

_“I get it,” Dipper says, but the way she glares at him for interrupting, he actually feels a twinge of—could it really be?—fear. He shouldn’t have said that, it was wrong. He should show respect. But why does he feel this way? Why should he be afraid? He doesn’t understand. “It’s going to cost you,” he continues, trying to take back the lead._

_To his utter astonishment, the older two laugh. Yellow frowns. “Hey now, that ain’t nice. Poor thing’s probably never been bound properly, that’s all.”_

_“Bound?” he says. Panic flares as he mentally surveys himself, but he doesn’t sense any of that awful smothering feeling, of his magic slipping out of his control._

_Meanwhile, the witches are still talking._

_“Course he has, look at the eyes.”_

_“Ohhh. That’s gonna spell trouble later, that is.”_

_“Not our problem.”_

_“Nothing we can do.”_

_“Regardless,” says Green, noticing Dipper’s distress. “He’s never known anything but the nasty business with the blood and stones and chains and lightning. Calm down, Dipper Pines, it’s okay.”_

_He feels his panic subside, his false breathing slow, and his mind, which had just begun to race, quiet as though a heavy blanket has been thrown over his thoughts. He knows this should really only make him panic more, his fears concerning lost control realized, but he can’t manage to be afraid even when he wants to be. “You… you know my name,” the demon says._

_Green cocks an eyebrow. “None of the others have got enough of a ring to them at the moment, do they? Now, questions!”_

_“Does he even know about the questions?” Yellow says. “He seems confused.”_

_Purple pokes a finger at him. “We summoned you, we bound you, the three of us did. So we get to ask three questions. One each. Understand?” She stares him down and he nods furiously, even pulling out a pad of paper to take a note. Something about the witches makes him feel like he’s back in school, studying for imminent evaluation, even when he’s nearly twenty two._

_“Tell us,” Yellow intones, “What would McKinley like for her birthday?”_

_The demon doesn’t know who that is, but he Knows she’d like_ <a pony> _._

_… Interesting._

_They’d told him he’s been bound, but while he Knows this to be true, he doesn’t feel compelled to answer. This isn’t anything like the last time, that soul-sickening feeling of being a passenger while his body and his powers obeyed the command of another (unconsciousness had been preferable to that nightmare)._

_He could even…_

_“Don’t lie,” Yellow tuts._

_Ah, well, that’s out. But what could be the harm in answering such a simple question, really? “She wants a pony.”_

_The witches briefly huddle together to discuss this._

_“Where are we supposed to get her a pony?”_

_“How about a puppy? That’s close enough, ain’t it?”_

_“She won’t take care of it. She can hardly be expected to look after her siblings as it is.”_

_Yellow’s eyes practically light up. “It could be stuffed! She can’t hurt a stuffed pony.”_

_“We’ll need to make it special,” Green murmurs thoughtfully, looking down at the little plastic box of supplies at her side._

_“Sturdy,” Purple agrees._

_The three turn back to Dipper and he has to pretend he wasn’t craning his head to get a look into their circle._

_“Second question,” Green says, “How long has our River Lord got left?”_

_Dipper weighs this answer longer, grasping its enormity. “At the rate things are going, he’s only got a good ten years left in him. I’m sorry,” he adds._

_“Not your fault. It’s those damn paper companies.”_

_“So it is that serious, eh?”_

_“What can we do?”_

_“Protest, naturally.”_

_“We could start a petition.”_

_“I say fuck ‘em, Cas has always been a good friend.”_

_“Time we return the favor.”_

_“This means war.”_

_The witches once again look up from ironing out their plan of attack and Dipper once again has to pretend he wasn’t interested, this time inspecting his nails._

_“Final question,” Purple says, indicating Yellow with a tilt of the head, “This one’s new computer keeps uh… whatcha call it... blue screening whenever it connects to the WiFi, but only our WiFi. We need you to fix it.”_

_It takes Dipper a minute to realize she isn’t joking. “That’s… that’s not really a question. Besides, you know there are people who are paid to do this, right? Technomages? Electromancers?”_

_“We’ve been through plenty, they haven’t fixed anything.”_

_Dipper runs a hand through his hair, bewildered at the situation in which he’s found himself, as the witches list their grievances with every tech shop within a twenty mile radius. He relents soon enough, putting his fingers to his mouth and issuing a clear whistle. The device comes flying out from a backpack in the corner and into his lap as he hovers over to the couch to sit down, witches shuffling to look over his shoulder._

_“Okay, what have you tried until now?”_

_…_

_“Now uncheck Internet Protocol Version Nine.”_

_“Done.”_

_“Now open Kitsune and mess around for a bit.”_

_After about twenty minutes, Dipper awkwardly clears his throat and the witches turn from their cat videos._

_“Are you still here?”_

_“Ah, he’s still bound.”_

_“We ought to banish him. It’d be the conscientious thing to do.”_

_“Can I do it?”_

_“Blow out the candle when you do it.”_

_“Begone! Back to the cesspit you crawled from!” Yellow adds in a whisper, “I’m sure your sister’s place is very nice, but you know how it is.”_

_It feels to Dipper then that a trapdoor of sorts has opened beneath him, and he Knows that he is free to go if he likes. The old crone winks, asking him to play along. He decides then that he vastly prefers this magic, powerful but performative like theatre, to the grim and gritty business of blood and bone._

_“Wait, wait!” he says, sticking out a hand and the witch pauses. “Don't- Could you- not banish me just yet?”_

_Three sets of eyes staring._

_“It’s just that, well, I’d like to ask my three questions now.”_

_“Huh?”_

_“What?”_

_“Beg pardon?”_

_“It’s very simple,” he says with a smile, finding his confidence, “You called me here and I came. There are three of you. So I get to ask a question each. Understand?”_

_Yellow looks to the other two, Green scratches her head, Purple has a crooked grin._

_“Is that how it goes?”_

_“Sounds reasonable.”_

_“I don’t see why not.”_

_Dipper is quiet a long time. He always has so many questions, but now, faced with the possibility of answers, they all seem to have fled._

_“Well?”_

_“You do have questions, don’t you?”_

_“Can’t answer what you don’t ask!”_

_Dipper knows he’ll have plenty of better ideas later, but if he doesn’t start talking now they won’t help him._

_“You guys summoned me for my Knowledge, but you already seem to know who I am. Who my sister is. How do you know us?”_

_“D'you reckon when you meet Death, you wouldn't know who it is standing in front of you? It'd be obvious, wouldn't it?”_

_“Written all over your face.”_

_“Infamous, you two.”_

_“My sister and I, are we under a curse?” It’s an old theory, but it still troubles him, the idea that Bill Cipher might have granted Dipper these powers in some grand scheme to get revenge on the Pines posthumously through him, with his own sister as the witness._

_“No.”_

_“You can’t tell? What’s the matter with you?”_

_“Sounds like buyer’s remorse to me.”_

_He starts to correct Purple, but somehow the words “We didn’t choose this” refuse to come out no matter how hard he tries. He opens his mouth and it’s like someone’s shoved cotton down his throat._

_“If you’re going to stand there gaping like a fish…”_

_“Final question,” he says, and oddly enough that comes out easily, “Do dream demons have any weaknesses?”_

 

`Huh. It's weird what sticks out in his mind. He never saw them again, right?`

`<sometimes once is enough>`

 

**** **2-2-6-10**

"Hey, aren't you a little young to be drinking coffee?" Tyler says playfully, tucking his gift-wrapped pumanther shirt under an arm.

"I dunno, wasn't Mary a little young to be Queen of the Scots?" Dipper says, tucking the wad of cash into the register. There’s a bit of an art to it; Stan charges a lot for even the most worthless of the gift shop’s junk, and the ancient register’s drawer doesn’t afford much room for it all.

Tyler strokes his chin thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes, then shrugs and exits the store whistling.

"You do that a lot, I’ve noticed."

Dipper looks up to see Henry standing on the threshold. "What’s that?"

"Mentioning some historical thing offhand like we were all there. Like, you have to know we have no idea what you're referencing, right? You could be pulling some plausible-sounding thing from thin air or the thing you're bringing up could actually have no relevance to our situation and either way we'd never know. I figure you're just doing it to shut us down because you know we won't have a response.”

Dipper gives Henry a short golf clap, climbing down off the box he’d been sitting on in a (failed) attempt to look older and taller (he’s not sure why Wendy’d asked him to watch the shop for her; if someone tried to walk out wearing a bunch of merch, she wouldn’t lift a finger). "Seen through like glass. Nothing gets past you, does it?"

"Nope. Speaking of..." Henry takes a few careful steps back, out onto the porch. "I'd like to see you try and get past me now."

Dipper squints, but for this to be coming from Henry means it must be going somewhere; unlike Mabel, Henry isn't one to risk doing anything that could get him labelled a pest. He walks toward Henry, slowly at first, then feints a rush from the right only to dash to Henry's left.

Before he even gets near the kid, he trips and falls on his face.

Henry is already there to help him up. "Whoops. Sorry about that."

"You did something?"

Henry points up to what appears to be a bundle of sticks tied above the doorframe.

"Devil's Shoestring," Dipper notes.

Henry smiles. "You really do know everything."

"I don't know why you put it there."

Henry turns around. "Okay, you can come out now."

Candy steps out from behind the totem pole, hand to her chin. "He did not freeze."

Henry shrugs. "No, but he did trip. Ostensibly, magic isn’t as accessible here as it's supposed to be."

Candy hums. "Alright. I will help you. On one condition."

"Yeah?"

"I want to be the next contestant on Mabel's cooking show."

"But she said the tickets were sold out."

"Then no deal."

"Okay, okay. I'll... see what I can do."

When Candy leaves (walking slowly backward into the bushes, without blinking or turning her back on them), Dipper turns to Henry. "You guys told Candy and Grenda I'm a demon,” he says flatly.

"Mabel said she, erm... 'assimilated them into the Mystery Cult',” Henry tells the “Welcome?” sign to Dipper’s left.

"I told her I have to approve these things first."

"She said a majority could override a potential veto."

"Henry, you didn't."

"Sorry…” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I thought this was the only way I could help."

"What do you mean?"

"It's probably easier to show you."

Just as Henry is motioning for Dipper to follow him, however, a loud cough sounds from inside—Wendy’s come back from her bathroom break and is now standing in the open doorway. "Hey Henry, you goin’ somewhere with Dipper?"

"Just into the forest. We shouldn’t be too long."

“Sorry bud, but I’m under orders from Stan not to let the little maniac outta my sight,” she says, forming a circle with thumb and forefinger and peering through it at Dipper, one eye closed.

“Since when do you care about doing what Stan says,” Dipper says, duly suspicious.

Wendy smirks, folding her arms and leaning against the doorframe. “Since you guys started that wildfire that brought Blubs and Durl patrollin’ around here and he started bribing me to keep a closer eye on you.”

“Nobody can prove that was us,” Dipper blurts out a little too quickly. Wendy cocks an eyebrow, skeptical.

“You let us go to the library and the pool,” Henry says.

“I was working at the pool that day and I know you wouldn’t let Dipper cause trouble at a library, dude, c’mon.”

Dipper sighs, then tents his fingers together under his nose. “Let’s just cut to the chase. How much is Stan paying you?”

 

**** **2-2-6-11**

To both twins’ surprise, Henry pulls a few dollars from his pocket.

“Stan’s been paying you,” Dipper says.

Henry nods. “We didn’t have to tell him about my situation, he just... knew. Said I’ll need to start now if I want to make my way in the world. I think that’s why all those times I stay here overnight, he doesn’t say anything.”

“I can’t take that from you, Henry.”

“She’s my cousin, that makes it my—”

Dipper raises a hand, swiftly cutting him off. “Okay, first of all, no. A hard, emphatic ‘no’ to however that sentence was going to end. Second of all, don’t worry, I’ve got my own stash.”

Dipper opens the closet beneath the stairs and begins to pull up a loose floorboard. It clatters aside, revealing nearly a dozen repurposed pickle jars full of bills and coinage. Plastered across each is a different crude drawing of a dead unicorn; one bisected, another leaking rainbows, a third exploding into a shower of horse parts, yet more ripped open and apart like morbid pinatas; all with cartoonish X’s for eyes. Each drawing features the same grave caption: _Every time you don’t tip, a baby unicorn dies_.

Mabel stands aghast. “That’s horrible.”

Dipper nods, looking over his treasure with draconic pride. “Not to mention lucrative. Tourists are so easy. It’s like fish jumping into your boat, almost isn’t fair.”

“I’ll have no part in this!” His sister storms out.

Dipper stops Henry before he can go after her. “She’s not actually upset, that was her ‘acting’ voice. You’ll know the real thing when you hear it, it’s a lot messier.”

Henry regards the loot with a puzzled expression. “Why did you hide this?”

Dipper sits down to start counting out Wendy’s counter-bribe. “Grunkle Stan is one of those adults who eats your hard-earned Summerween candy in the middle of the night without asking.”

 

**.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.**

_Dipper is entirely used to floral arrangements, incense, even a few drops of blood here and there. What he does not expect is the elderly gentlemen laying a black cat at his feet, a blade held to its throat._

_“Woah woah, hey, that’s completely uncalled for.” As much as he despises these animals, it’s not like he wants them dead (so much as to quit looking through him like that)._

_The absolute nut actually seems surprised to hear this. "Are you not a god?"_

_"No," Dipper says. He wonders what this guy might do if he said yes. Hug him or something? Ew, uncomfortable. He looks around the room to make sure it isn’t only him who’s confused here, but he catches not a whiff of concern from any of the attendees_ <four in total> _. "Just so we’re clear, you’re all in on this?"_

_A chorus of “yeah’s” and “mmhmm’s”._

_As Dipper is processing what he can do with this response, how to protest the proceedings without revealing weakness and sacrificing control, the leader’s hand makes a practiced motion. The screech he hears is brief, but so loud and sharp and urgent as to be utterly disorienting, scattering his thoughts among the stars_ <suddenly he feels them shining <inescapable> <even on a place like this <their fires buffeting his soul with wrathful intensity <bolstering rather than snuffing him out <his being every bit a worthy heir to their chaos <even if he does not understand why or how>>>>>> _._

_He recognizes this feeling. He’d felt it on the worst day of his life._

_Blood is filling the grooves of the interlocking circles, pulse by weakening pulse._

<he does not remember what they asked for <only the disgust he felt toward them upon hearing their request <not because they had killed the cat <who they scarcely noticed stretched and went on its merry way <its wish handily granted>> but because he could tell <even when he had finished laying it out plain as day> they could not <or rather refused to> conceive of sacrifice in terms beyond blood>>>

<when next they summon him there is much more of it>

_…_

_At first, he doesn’t know what to do with it all. The Knowledge of how to do… so much. Too much? (HA! No such thing!), buzzing like a static charge at his fingertips. It makes him feel… bigger. Important. Like this he thinks he could look anyone in the eyes, take up as much space as he wants, say whatever he likes to whomever he feels should listen. And they would listen! Who wouldn’t, with the secrets he could tell? Not that he would, because that’s the thing, this Knowledge? All his._

_And you wanna know the real kicker? C’mere, lean in close. He won't bite._

_It isn’t._

_Going._

_Away!_

_… Huh. That thought feels weird, the way it sets both panic (but at what?) and excitement (but what for?) roiling in his gut (in his gut? Is that right? Where do humans keep their feelings, again? Ah, but he isn’t human, is he? After all this time, why does he still imagine that he is?)._

_And it is these contradictory reactions that give him the idea._

_…_

_When the demon returns, the familiar sound of an animal screaming itself senseless is there to greet him._

<HE’S BACK HE’S BACK HE’S BACK HE’S BACK>

_"Shut up, Waddles," Dipper says, automatically and without malice. He and the pig had never gotten along too well_ <not true <Waddles had loved the human boy he’d met That Summer≫ _. Dipper had been around Waddles long enough to understand his moods nearly as well as Mabel’s. When they were younger, he’d been endlessly amused by the pig’s names for_ <conceptions of> _him: Danger!, Not right!, and Bad Smell!_ <admittedly the last was an appellation he’d carried even before he died>

_Those are still the ones Waddles uses now, only without exclamations; demon or not, Dipper’s presence is at least a familiar discomfiture._

_Dipper catches Henry's voice over the racket. “I’ve got it!" The sound of footsteps swiftly increases in volume._

_"Hey, big guy.” Henry’s voice again, nearer this time, and Waddles’ shrieks die down to agitated coughs. “Something got you spooked?"_

_The back door to the Shack opens and light spills out onto the porch as Henry steps outside, a frying pan half-heartedly raised. “We’ve told you guys like fifty times, she’s not- oh." Henry's eyes finally find Dipper floating there, in a particularly_ <supernaturally> _resilient swath of shadow just beyond the doorway. To his credit, he doesn't start. "Oh. Uh. Hey Dipper. Do I... need to invite you in or—"_

_"Dipper's here?" Mabel pokes her head around the corner. Her eyes widen behind her glasses_ <rectangular <bordering on squarish>> <it no longer throws him off seeing them <though it’d taken her nearly a year to start wearing them regularly <in spite of the ward keeping them from accidentally falling off that’s been woven into the correction spells [

_“From what you’ve told us, this doesn’t sound like a problem glasses can fix.”_

_“And he calls himself a demon,” Dr. Jericho says with a smirk. “The glasses themselves do nothing. The fundamental purpose of a pair of glasses, however, is to help correct vision. That’s what matters most to the magic.”_

_Dipper, fascinated, leans over the back of Dr. Jericho’s chair to watch her work. “Oh, I see. You use the glasses as the conduit for your charms…”_

_On the other side of the table, Mabel twiddles her thumbs. “Hey uh, if you correct stuff, I’ll… will I still be able to see Dipper okay?”_

_Dr. Jericho doesn’t look up. “I get the feeling whatever magic binds the two of you, it is far more powerful than anything my cantrips could possibly counter.”_

]>≫ _but are ultimately outdone by her smile. The next Dipper knows, he's being swept into a crushing bear hug. "Hey!! Bro, where ya been, you haven’t come by in like FOREVER!" she greets him, ignoring the handful of sparks that fly up from him at the contact._

_“Can’t have been that long,” Dipper says lightly, looking over her shoulder at Henry even as his elbows fight for the space to let him hug her back. “This one’s still here.”_

_“Give him some credit, he’s tough! Also, he practically lives here now, genius.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“Uh-huh!” she says, finally disengaging with a pat to his shoulder. “So, first things first, what’ve you been getting into tonight?” She waves a hand in front of her nose. “You’ve got that freshly summoned smell.”_

_"Nothing good, I'm afraid," he says, letting his shoulders slump._

_"Mmm, you're in luck. There's Moosetrax left. I'll getcha some." She disappears back into the house._

_A beat._

_Her head pops back around the corner, gaze oscillating rapidly between Henry and Dipper. "… Huh," she says finally, knuckles lightly rapping at the doorframe_ <in thought> _. "Henry, you, uh… you see my brother, don’t you?"_

_Henry nods mutely. It slowly dawns on Dipper that it's only the third such time he's been visible to Henry since they’ve met._

_"Alright, this is gonna take some cotton candy, too." Mabel nods to herself before vanishing into the kitchen. Waddles, having completed his personal mission to warn of Dipper's arrival, snuffles and follows her._

_“Nice to see you too, pal!” Dipper calls after him._

_..._

_“Dipper, did I run the dishwasher already?” she shouts from the kitchen._

<no>

_“No!” he shouts back from the living room, marveling at how quickly they fell back into their routines. She says it’s been three months. Dipper thinks he remembers that being a long time. Time has felt increasingly unreal as they’ve grown older, become little other than some sort of joke everyone else is in on. It was simple to become unstuck in time, he’d decided, when you had no real point of reference, nothing to order your existence_ <no Monday through Friday <forget the weekend≫ <no winding down in the afternoon and revving up in the morning <with sleep to separate them>> <no breakfast lunch and dinner <and in the case of his sister midnight snack≫ <he just is> _._

_Unfortunately, the same return to routine is true of Waddles. The pig is lying in the corner near the door leading toward the kitchen with one eye open and fixed on the demon; a sentinel on duty. Dipper can feel the taunt wire of tension drawn between them, Knows how fast his head will snap up and his muscles will launch him forward the moment Dipper so much as moves too quickly. The ease of it is enough to make Dipper want to pluck that thread, even a disconcerting stare in the pig’s direction could do it. Unfortunately, he knows ~~from experience~~ that if he sets Waddles off and he starts squealing, the pig won’t be the one getting put outside. _

_And Henry. Oh Henry._

_Henry’s fear in Dipper’s presence is so thick, so potent, so glaringly obvious to the demon in every move that he makes, the way pain is evident in the stilted movements of the injured, the demon does not understand how the human does not choke on it, how he can still continue to function normally when it should be disabling. The only clues he receives are the intermingling shades of what appears to be guilt, though why Henry would feel guilty for feeling afraid is beyond him (it would not be the first time Henry proved challenging to read). For his part, Dipper hates how seeing that fear brings on in him an overwhelming urge to capitalize on it, like a dog straining after a fleeing rabbit (he’s a demon, not a dog, remember?). Hates that he knows ~~from experience~~ how simple Henry’s mind would be to overrun by that fear, to destroy, and as fucked up as he is fully aware that would be, the temptation to do so has continued to taunt him for nearly as long as he’s known this man. _

_If he told you that it’s based in curiosity, would you believe him? He doesn’t want to believe it himself, that something as paltry as that could be all it takes. Nevertheless, some abhorrent part of him hungers; he wants to find out if he can really do it, wants to see Henry in such a state, wants to know what will happen, what it will feel like. The rest of him will be damned before he lets this happen ~~again~~ and has prepared accordingly. _

_The nightmares_ <golden-eyed> <hollow with hunger that isn’t their own> _flanking the couch crouch, awaiting the order (no more than a formality) climbing its way up his throat, the order that Dipper struggles to force down because it’s the magic, it’s_ his _magic, resistant and stubborn, not meant to be restricted and restrained, wrong wrong wrong. It’s still fighting him, crying out to be used even as the nightmares fall back. Dipper holds it almost as a sneeze is held, knowing that while he can keep it at bay for now, that power will break free soon enough, one way or the other. Maybe this was a bad idea._

_“Oh, and Stan wanted me to tell you to fix the dryer if you came back.”_

_“Again?” Dipper says when he finds his voice, the one that isn’t distorted_ <not the one he wants to use> _. “Where is he?”_

_“He got ‘held up’ in Vegas.”_

_“Well I don’t remember how to fix a dryer, he’ll have to trade me for it.” He can feel the magic pulse restlessly beneath his skin at this blatant lie. He’ll need all of it for what he’s doing, he can’t waste it on the dryer when it’s only gonna break down again in like a month (Stan’s too cheap to get a new one; the handle fell off ages ago, it takes some finagling and a butter knife just to open the door)._

_“He left a couple of books he picked up recently in the closet for you in case you said that.”_

_“Yeah, and who’s gonna trade them to me? I keep telling him, it’s not gonna work if you do it.”_

_“Well yeah, but I was thinking maybe…”_

_Dipper’s ears prick up. Could this be it? His first deal with Henry? Oh no, he hasn’t planned for that!_

_“Ah, well maybe now’s not the best time.”_

_Dipper sighs in relief. The relief does not last long._

_“Dipper,” Henry hisses suddenly, and the apprehension interred there more than anything turns the demon’s head. Henry’s eyes direct him to the spot in the corner where two more nightmares lie, motionless, all teeth and tension and hardened expressions. “Something followed you back.”_

_Fuck, they must have materialized while he was distracted._

_“Oh… oh no, those guys are with me. They’re always around. You just don’t see them normally!” Dipper’s cheery tone_ <meant to put him at ease> _does little to slow the spread of neon green_ <fear>  _through Henry’s aura._

_“What are they?”_

_“I mean, I’d introduce you, but odds are it’s going to hit you in about two sec—"_

_“Antipathy and Suspicion,” Henry mutters, staring at the nightmares intently. “But… Hold on. How do I know that?”_

_“Welcome to my world!” Dipper spreads his arms wide, pouncing on the subject change. “Only all the time. It’s all thanks to a little something I like to call: dream logic.”_

_“Is that what we’re calling her now?” Mabel shouts over the sound of the ancient dishwasher chugging away, but Dipper is already halfway through the introductory paragraph of his latest thesis._

_Dipper doesn’t need to notice the way Henry stiffens and shades_ <though notice he does <he always notices <and rarely forgets>>> _to know that his sister’s boyfriend is completely lost, that Dipper is coming across as manic. The knowledge wouldn’t have stopped him before, and is not about to do so now. He has to admire the guy’s patience though, his politeness, his willingness to listen_ <Henry’s a tad more reserved than himself or his sister <he wonders if that helps them work <Mabel loves to tell him everything <Henry could listen to her all day <no matter the subject <cross-stitching to kirin-watching <”I refuse to die until I see one.”>>>>>> _._

_“I mean, you have to admit it makes sense, right? Think about it, Henry. Maybe everybody taps into this thing in their dreams, and I just happen to do so constantly on account of my particular magic focus? It explains why I can’t dream myself—I’m always dreaming, in a way. It also explains those flashes of insight humans get, where they get the material for their prophetic dreams. Even the run-of-the-mill type of dream, like, where you compete against your best friend’s grandmother in a drag race or something and you just Know that’s who that person is supposed to be, even if you’ve never met them.”_

_“Okay, so this invisible water is just floating around everywhere and we can’t see it.” He isn’t just saying that; it’s plain to Dipper by Henry’s aura that he’s genuinely still trying to understand him. Nobody usually keeps up with Dipper this long. What a trooper. Mabel aside, Dipper really does want to be friends with this guy. Here’s hoping his plan will work._

_“No, I think that’s just what it’s like in my imagination.”_

_“So it isn’t real.”_

_“No, you’re not getting this, it’s like…” Dipper looks up toward the ceiling, as if what it’s like will be written up there. It isn’t. “Okay nevermind, water’s sort of the best analogue I’ve got, I can’t really explain better than that.”_

_“Is that how it is with your nightmares, they’re just shaped like sheep most of the time ‘because’?”_

_Dipper shakes his head. “I don’t know, Henry. You’d think, in a world where you can’t so much as take out the trash without the anthropomorphic personification of littering making an appearance to personally thank you, I might end up with something more fitting than sheep.”_

_“It fits fine.” Mabel from the kitchen, again. “You’re a dream demon, well, what fits dreaming better than sheep, huh?”_

_“If they have to be an animal, why not horses?” Henry suggests. “They are called nightmares.”_

_This starts an argument about exactly which creature would best represent nightmares_ <“Obviously something from under the sea, like a bobbit worm or those squid with human teeth.” <“Dipper, I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t need to be reminded I share a planet with things like that.”>> _. All their chattering helps Dipper to ignore his hunger and Henry’s fear to fade_ <to caution> _. Not long now._

_…_

_“Exploring Mars huh.” Henry says, switching off the television and lying back more heavily against the couch. “Wonder if it’d be anything like the moon landings."_

_Dipper can’t help it, he snorts into his folded arms. “That’s cute, Henry.”_

_Henry looks down at his girlfriend’s brother, presently lying on his stomach on the floor, propped up on his elbows._ <<"Like some sort of lazy jungle cat."> he thinks> <the human isn’t sure where that comparison came from <the demon is not what he would describe as ‘majestic’>> <a failure to correctly interpret his own self-preservation responses>

<Mabel told him her brother might need some space <code for something <that the human at least recognizes means he should exercise caution>>>

_“What’s so funny down there?” Henry asks_ <because <in spite of this> he feels that he must> <he will wish he hadn't>.

_“Only a paltry few hundred thousand years old and human beings already believe themselves infinite. They’ll never make it to space. It’s just a pleasant dream, one where they don’t perish unmourned in the prison they built for themselves,” Dipper does not say. Though it’s on the tip of his tongue and certainly part of the joke, it’s not the funniest part._

_Rather than address Henry, Dipper raises his voice. “Mabel, you know your boyfriend still believes in the moon?”_

<the human's epinephrine release spikes a tick> _Dipper tries not to laugh again. It's hard._

<the human is hoping this isn’t going where he suspects it’s going> _“Uh, Mabel?” Tone unsure_ <asking for help> _._

_“He’s baiting you, don’t fall for it,” Mabel warns from the kitchen, where she is presently loading vanilla ice cream and cotton candy into a blender._

_"Yeah, I mean. Of course the moon is real,” Henry says, attempting to sound confident that he hadn’t actually let such a ridiculous notion shake him and failing._

_“Oh, I totally respect and support your beliefs, honey!” Mabel answers cheerily enough as she measures in the milk_ <not the reassurance he was hoping for> _._

_“It’s alright, Henry. Mabel doesn’t believe in the sweater curse.”_

_“Oh, not THAT again.”_

_“What’s a sweater curse?”_

_“Nothing‼”_

_“Of all the curses to be skeptical of in this day and age...”_

_“You just don’t get it, bro. If you do something over and over a bunch of times, sooner or later it’s bound to work!”_

_“That’s not—”_

_“Dipper’s turn to be embarrassed!” Mabel announces. “Hey Henry, did you know Dipper can shapeshift?”_

_“No,” Henry says at the same time Dipper says, “Oh here we go.”_

_“Yeah, and you wouldn’t know it even if you could see him all the time, because he practically never uses it anymore!”_

_“You’re the only one who can see me, what does it matter?”_

_They can hear her sputter in disbelief. “What does it- Who thinks to themselves ‘ah, I can be anything I imagine, guess I’ll choose to look like a NERD all the time’?”_

_“Hey, if it ain’t broke…”_

_“I think he looks nice. Dapper even.”_

_“Thanks, Henry. Besides, Mabel, it’s called professionalism. I could be summoned at any time, I have to be ready! I could be creative with it if I really wanted.”_

_“Oh yeah?” She stomps into the room. “Change into something right now.”_

_Fuck. “Sure, uh, let’s see…”_

_“Well?”_

_Another restless pulse of magic sweeps through him, eager, and Dipper feels his limited handle of the reins begin to slip. “I’m thinking,” he stalls._

_“What logistics do you need to factor to go like"—she slaps her hands together—“Bang! A gi-huge-ic, puppy-headed purple dragon with cuddly fur instead of scales, let’s go!”_

_“I mean, there’s so many options, it’s got to be something good. I’ve got a brand to protect here.”_

_“And like you don’t even have an excuse?” the rant continues. “You’re a dream demon, you’ve got the whole of peoples’ crazy unconscious brains to pick for ideas. Mine for instance!”_

_Dipper shivers (he’s gotten much better at making it look convincing). “I don’t want to think about half the things I’ve seen in your dreams.”_

_“Anyway!” Mabel says, pushing bowls of melty purple ice cream at Henry and Dipper before sitting down with her own. “You’ve stalled long enough, give me the deets.” She points her spoon at Dipper with a dangerous grin. “Which name did they use to summon you?”_

[ _Mabel sets the tray of dinosaur-shaped cookies down on Soos’ desk. “Thanks for seeing us on such short notice.”_

_“Aw, always available for the Mystery Twins,” Soos says, raising one hand high for Mabel to jump and high five and putting out a fist bump long enough for Dipper to pretend to reciprocate._

_The boombox in the corner of Soos’ bedroom switches itself on. “Yeah, about Mystery Twins,” says a halting voice on the radio, resolving slowly from a multitude of stolen sound bites stitched together. “You’re the ONE who gave us THE epithet. We want you-to BE our Namer, Zeus.”_

_“We’re gonna get business cards!” Mabel waves a select three of her fifty possible designs about in the air before handing them over to Soos._

_“So colorful!” he marvels, flipping them over to the side featuring Dipper’s summoning circle._

_“Yeah, but mostly? We’re trying to-be more careful! from now on. The NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE-s have gotta stop.” Here, the rising hum of static behind the voice reaches its peak and the boombox’s speakers blow out. Dipper mutters a curse under his breath._

_Soos, already bouncing in place, hardly notices the technical difficulties. “My years of naming original characters and video game party members have perfectly prepared me for this moment!” Then his face falls. “Ah, wait though. You doods sure you want me Naming your alter egos? I mean, they’re probably gonna need to fit just right for your adventures. There’s people who like, actually go to school for this kinda thing these days. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great job just… I wouldn’t wanna hold you doods up.”_

_“Soos. Soos. You’ve got this,” says one of Soos’ wind-up action figures, Dipper’s voice recording coming out tinny and discordant (slightly more so than usual, anyway). “We wouldn’t trust anybody else to do it.”_

_“We brought you samples to spitball from!” Mabel visibly strains to present Soos with an armload of paper. “It’s sorted alphabetically. Hearts mean cute, stars mean cool.”_

_“You probably didn’t need to bring that many,” chirps a woodpecker at the window before relaxing its rigid posture and taking off into the sky with a terrified squawk._

_Mabel gapes. “Are you kidding? Do you know how long it took to narrow it down to just this?!”_

_Soos laughs and effortlessly takes the fire hazard off Mabel’s hands. “I’ll see what I can do.”_ ]

_“Alcor.”_

_A snort._

_“What? I thought you liked that pair!”_

_“Oh don’t get me wrong,” Mabel says between bites of ice cream_ <“How does that not destroy your teeth?”> _, “Mizar is like, so kickass. But then the letter ‘Z’ is the second best letter in the whole alphabet, it can make practically anything awesome.”_

_He almost wants to ask which letter is first best._ <it’s ‘X’>

You’re kidding. <not in the slightest>

_“Your turn to spill,” Dipper says, nodding to a stack of cardboard boxes beside the fish tank. “I noticed you’re all packed up. Have you figured out a plan?”_

_“Mmm. Waddles is staying here with Stan and Henry’s moving into the apartment with me after all!”_

_Dipper turns to Henry. “You find a new job up there?”_

_Henry grimaces_ <brain freeze <not the demon’s question>> _. “Not exactly. I’m going to commute.”_

_“It’s like three hours away.”_

_“I’ve gotten pretty good at jumping,” Henry says. It isn’t a boast._

<Henry on his bike skidding to a sudden halt <pulling a stopwatch out of his back pocket <33:33:33>>>

_“I see.”_

_“When the extra eye’s open it means he literally saw,” Mabel informs Henry as she opens a box, pulling out a book the size of a VCR. “Dipper, you gotta see my textbooks, they’re GINORMOUS. Stan got them all for less than a hundred bucks.”_

_“You’ve already started reading them?”_

_“Dipper please, when I’m through, grad school won’t know what hit it.”_

_…_

_“I figured it had to be something.”_

_They’re sitting together on the roof, side by side with their legs dangling off the edge, the stars twinkling merrily in the cloudless sky above as if glad of the space, the moon hovering duplicitously amid them. Dipper had planned to lure Henry up here after Mabel fell asleep (he’d told her months ago it would be a bad idea to stop so suddenly, but she hadn’t listened; now she’s paying for it), and was surprised to find he had already gone up of his own volition. In fact, it had almost seemed like Dipper was the one who had sprung a trap._

_“Like I said, I just lost track of time.” That was true enough. The freedom to explore the oddities of the post-Transcendence world for himself had proven intoxicating now that corporeality was attainable in short bursts, now that their combined network of fellows and friends built up from Alcor's clientele and the Mystery Twin's allies had grown to encompass the nation, even beyond._

_“You’re sure?” Henry presses. Dipper isn’t sure what Henry wants him to say. It’s obvious he wants something, but until Dipper figures out what it is, he can't give it to him._

_“Well,” Dipper tries, “I guess that isn’t all. You may have noticed Mabel and I haven’t done the whole Mystery Twins thing in a while.”_

_Henry has noticed._

_Dipper pauses as Henry nods, waiting for words. “Truth is, it’s not just about personal space. I honestly don’t think we’ll be able to keep it up.”_

_Henry doesn’t follow._

_Something in the way Henry tilts his head turns on the tap in Dipper, explanation flowing out in a rush. “It’s just, well, her life is finally getting started, y’know? She’s got you to think about, school to think about, and there’s her health_ — _going off medication is going to be harder on her than she’s expecting. What I’m saying is, she’s just not gonna be able to find the time to juggle everything she wants. She has a limit.”_

_Henry smiles ever so slightly, aura gaining flecks of lavender_ <amusement> _. “She said you’d say that. She says you always say that, and that you’re always wrong.”_

_Dipper breathes out, leaning back on his palms. “And I’ve always admired that about her, how she doesn’t get in her own way. But sometimes I have to do it for her.”_

_“So you stayed away to give her space, let her sort out her priorities.”_

_“That was part of it, yes.”_

_“Part of it,” Henry echoes, sounding unconvinced. He’s still waiting for something. What else is there? Dipper isn’t able to read Henry nearly as easily as the folks of Gravity Falls he’d grown up with, but he stares hard at the patterns of orange and green, of the contours of that familiar fear and its strange tinges of_ —

_Of guilt._

_“You think you’re the problem,” Dipper says quietly, letting the realization slip out. “You think I stayed away because I was worried I’d scare you off." And isn't there some truth to that? Isn't that what this plan is for, why he came here tonight?_

_Henry blinks in surprise, but does not deny it. The guilt silently swells, eclipsing the fear. “You’re her favorite person, you know that?” Henry says softly, looking away, up at that bright ball of lies. “I don’t think there’s a day that goes by she isn’t thinking about you.”_

_Dipper understands what he's getting at. It isn’t that he’s missed Mabel. He hasn’t; it’s hard to miss someone who you know can be there for you the moment you need them. But hardly a day goes by where he doesn’t wish she could see what he just saw, hear what he just heard, do what he just did, and oh wouldn’t she have loved to hold one of these manticore pups? Wouldn’t it have been great if she’d been the one to finish the one liner and then he’d high-fived her and they’d both turned away just as the whale eater devoured the mermaid poachers' ship whole? He’s sure she’s had the same thoughts in his absence; they had been constantly interrupting each other earlier in their rush to get their twin up to speed._

_“And the way she talks about you, I've been looking forward to getting to know you better for a long time now. But somehow, when I get the chance, I can’t…” Henry swallows, hands balling into fists in his lap, still pointedly avoiding looking at Dipper. “I know I've overreacted before. That time you were in my head, eating that memory, and I know you weren't conscious when you... I know you aren't going to hurt me, I know I'm being irrational. But when I’m around you, I just, it’s like instinctual…” He laughs, humorless. “And you can see it, can’t you? That I’m fucking terrified. And, and if my inability to control my emotions is what’s keeping you from visiting, I just want you to know—"_

_“You’re allowed,” Dipper says firmly, seriously, and the rest is slow to come because this is it, this is the way down he’s chosen and he must commit. “You’re allowed to be afraid. Let me show you something.”_

_..._

 

> _“There’s so much you don’t know, Henry. One day, I’ll show it to you. I’ll show it to you, and you’ll burn, just like I did.”_
> 
> _Henry continues to flip aimlessly through the channels_ <ZNN> <Manimal Planet> <Fux News> _, paying the demon little mind. Still, the neon green is there, at the edges. “I get it, you’re trying to freak me out. It isn’t working.”_
> 
> _The demon quirks an eyebrow. “You can lie better than that, can’t you?”_
> 
> _Henry sighs and leans forward on the edge of the couch, hands hanging between his knees. “I just want you to know, Dipper, if you can hear me,” Henry says carefully, as though the demon were a startled horse, voice coated by calm (does the human really think he can't hear his blood quicken?), "that Mabel told me you're working through some sort of... episode right now, so for both our sakes I am choosing not to engage you until you're lucid. Alright?”_
> 
> _In an instant, Henry finds himself pressed against the nearest wall_ — _unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to anything. The demon gets to his feet, flanked by two of his nightmares. “And what will you do now, huh?” the demon asks, reeeeeal easy, pleasant curiosity masking abject rage._
> 
> _Henry sputters; the demon hasn't left him enough air to waste on making his useless noises._
> 
> _"Help me out here, dude, maybe I've missed something. Do I look like a human child to you?"_ <he does <<in his anger> he's disabled the modifications to his appearance>> <it's the first time this human has ever really seen him <sans disguise>>
> 
> _The human isn't adequately listening; his base instincts have taken over, his attention preoccupied mainly with the essential task of struggle_ — _to regain movement, regain control, relieve hypoxia. This only drives the demon_ <and <by extension> the human> _further up the wall._
> 
> _"What gives you the right?" the demon snarls, still smiling but dropping any pretense of friendliness, an ocean roaring in his ears. "What gives a pathetic lump of decaying meat like you_ the authority _to talk down to me like this, to decide what is and isn't me?" He relaxes his hold by a slight fraction; he wants an answer._
> 
> _The human’s words come out in gasps. “I know. Won’t. Kill me.”_
> 
> _“Liar,” he says, and who knew two short syllables could hold so much contempt._
> 
> _“Mabel.”_
> 
> _He shakes his head as though he’s being bothered by flies. “Mabel doesn’t know any better.”_
> 
> _“Ahem!”_
> 
> _The demon turns his head to see his twin standing in the kitchen entrance on his left, arms folded. He waits, his nightmares advancing to stand between them, hackles raised. Henry continues his silent, hopeless battle against nothing._
> 
> _“Antipathy, Suspicion.” The addressed nightmares do not waver. “I expect this sort of behavior from Dipper when he’s totally out of it, but you two little angels?”_
> 
> _The girl steps forward. The nightmares, visibly tense, as though fighting with every last ounce of strength to stand their ground, each take an unwilling step back. She smiles._
> 
> _“Thought so.”_
> 
> <this isn’t how it ends <she thinks>> <not even close>
> 
> _She raises her eyes to her brother now, and the smile wilts. Then she pulls her sweater up and over her head, tossing it aside onto the couch to reveal an undershirt decorated by flamingos playing croquette. She puts one foot back, dropping into a ready stance and putting out her hands as though gripping some invisible staff. "Alright bro, let's dance."_
> 
> _The demon puts his head to one side, suddenly uncertain. "Uh, wait. What's going on?"_
> 
> _"I gotta duel you now. You are like, attacking my boyfriend. You've gravely insulted my honor and I shall have satisfaction." She flexes her empty fingers in anticipation and out of sheer habit the demon’s eyes briefly flash brighter gold. She weighs the object in her hand experimentally and frowns. "A mini golf putter, are you serious? What a scaredy-cat."_
> 
> _Dipper huffs_ <the force on Henry relaxing with his lack of attention> _and the putter is replaced by a 9 iron. "Yeah, now we're talking. Ready-set-go!"_
> 
> _Mabel swings. Dipper flinches, putting his hands up over his head. Henry drops onto the couch._
> 
> _The club stops inches from Dipper’s face. Then, slowly, it bops the top his head. “You good now?” Mabel asks, lowering her weapon. “You awake?”_
> 
> <demons do not flinch>
> 
> _Dipper slowly lowers his arms, peering over them, and in that instant it slams back into him, what had been being held at bay, the enormity of his actions. His eyes, wide with horror, go to Henry, shrouded entirely by fear, Henry who is scrambling off the couch and away, out the front door, as if pursued_ <by the unwelcome reawakening of unpleasant memories> _._
> 
> _Mabel fixes her eyes on the ground, lips pursed, and Dipper knows she’s holding back the beginnings of tears. She laughs instead, thin and shaky. “There goes another one.”_
> 
> _“Mabel, I—”_
> 
> _“Not yet,” Mabel says in a tone that would brook no argument, slumping onto the couch as though suddenly saddled by an enormous weight. The golf club is relinquished_ <vanishing before it’s even hit the ground> _. Antipathy presses their snout into her open palm, trying to comfort, but she makes no move to stroke them. “Just… please don’t say anything yet.”_
> 
> _They hear a car door slam. They do not hear the car start, nor the sound of tires on gravel._ <in an hour they will hear the front door open again>

 

> _Mabel looks around, confused. "Where's Henry?" She looks down at the potted plant and he can see the moment of realization in the way her mouth sets into a line, in the way she instantly colors from bright yellows and greens to nigh solid watermelon_ <irritation> _. "Dude, change him back,” she says._
> 
> _Dipper threads his fingers behind his head. "I don't feel like it."_
> 
> _Mabel's expression sours further, but that's just fine. Like this, no one can tell him what to do. Not even her. "If you wait til you come down off the magic or whatever, you're not gonna remember how to turn him back! Remember when Soos got stuck as a dire wolf?"_
> 
> _"You just have to keep bringing that up, huh? I didn't hear him complain."_
> 
> _"Yeah, well he didn't have to carry himself back from the pound. Blubs put so many tranqs in him, I don't think he remembers half of it. Also, can you hurry? This ice cream's gonna melt and I can't eat it all myself."_
> 
> _"Yes you can."_
> 
> _"Okay yeah, but I made it for us to share! Romance-ways!"_
> 
> _"Just like, pour it on his roots."_
> 
> _"Will that work?" she asks, poking a finger into Henry's soil. "Can plants taste things? Won't it give him... put him in... uh... what's the word?"_ <'shock'> _"Yes, exactly, thanks Other Stan. Glad to see you're still a pal."_ <"Sounds like a plan, Other Stan.">
> 
> _"Probably," Dipper admits, trying to hide the smile (this entire situation is ridiculous)._
> 
> _She straightens up, crosses her arms. "Is this about Seal Rock? I told you, you can go without me! We can bust some uppity sea monsters any other day of the week, bro."_
> 
> _"It's not as fun by myself," he mutters, glancing away._
> 
> _"Then ask Wendy, you know she's always ready to go."_

 

> _He’d heard it. Not much, just the refrain. So fleeting he’d think he’d misheard if it were anything but what he suspects it is._
> 
> _“May I?”_
> 
> _“What?”_
> 
> _Dipper summons his violin using the tried-and-true technique of finding it already in his hands the moment he needs it. “Your soul. I’d like to hear it.”_
> 
> _It is something he’s learned no other demon can do. Demons are inherently inharmonious. And yet he plays._
> 
> <“What’s the significance of that?”>
> 
> <“Does it have to be significant?”>
> 
> _Dipper plucks at the strings, slowly at first, then picking up speed, faster and faster, summoning a melody from the pizzicato, his bow at the ready. He can hear a heartbeat in his ears now, not his own (it's been a decade), beating faster in time with it. A heavy downbow and Dipper distantly registers the immense loneliness crushing into his audience, that fragile human heart he now holds in his hands, or between his teeth, his until he chooses to let go; followed by a sharp upbow and this time it's hello fears, and Henry sure has a lot of them, first and foremost is a hulking figure, shouting something, about how he'll hunt you down and kill you himself if you ever dare, but dare to what?, to hope, to dream, to cross him, pick any, pick all, he's done just that, last and not least by miles is the stars winking out, Henry never aimed so high and yet he's found himself among them all the same, and to lose their light now would destroy him, would send him crashing back down to earth; another long downbow and it's the frustrations that come running, grievances trampling one another in their rush to be heard, so used to being trod down and pushed aside, Henry doesn't know where to begin..._
> 
> _On and on and on, he plays... until he's sure the strings should fray..._
> 
> _But no matter what he tries, it ends in circles, in spirals, an ever ascending tone to nowhere, until at last he tires of climbing Penrose stairs..._
> 
> _It isn't until Dipper pauses that Henry even remembers him, remembers himself, and then he is snatching the violin away, breaking it over a knee. Dipper watches passively. It isn’t real, after all. None of this is._
> 
> _Henry gestures at the pieces, so viscerally disturbed by Dipper's performance that the ordinarily collected man is physically shaking. “What the HELL was that?”_
> 
> _Dipper stares at them, his voice is soft. “I almost had it. I thought I’d heard something familiar about you. Just for a second. Something I recognized. Not a good thing.”_
> 
> _“Are you listening to me?” Anger trumps fear and Henry picks Dipper up by the lapels. “What did you- Why did you do that?”_
> 
> _“Because I could, obviously. Why else?”_

 

_Dipper stops flashing and lets his outline fill in as he stuffs his hands into pockets that did not exist mere moments ago. “So yeah, just. Think about that next time you wanna act like this is all on you.”_

_“So…” Henry begins, fingers interlocked before him, “let me make sure I’m following you. In one instance of tonight, you nearly murder me; in another, you turn me into a plant; and in a third you use me for some sort of soul experiment?”_

_“That about sums it up,” Dipper says, eyes fixed on the forest beyond the shack. Whatever happens now, happens, and he's accepted that._

_“Dipper… I don’t know how to tell you this, but this is the opposite of unnerving. It’s downright reassuring.”_

_“…Come again?” Dipper says, looking back. He's shocked to find that it’s true; the fear that had characterized Henry’s aura for most of the night has largely dissipated._

_“If I’m understanding correctly, you were so concerned for my wellbeing and that your magic wouldn’t be used to hurt me that you literally expended it all keeping tabs on other dimensions to make sure you wouldn’t repeat their mistakes. Speaking of… lingering over the failures of not just yourself but countless versions of yourself, with whom you may only share superficial similarity… I don’t think that’s healthy, dude. You’re…” Dipper sees The Pause, the one he’d come to know meant someone was trying to find a polite way to call him crazy. “You’re creating more problems than there need to be, y’know? Worried about you, man.”_

_Okay, he had to admit that one was pretty good._

_"Thanks. For the vote of confidence and for worrying, but... well. There's a reason I needed to show you that. There's something I'd like to give to you."_

_Dipper whistles, a piercing summons that sends animals scurrying for cover. They hear a rustling in response: something in the distance is bounding through the trees, so quickly it creates a visible wave in the canopy as branches bend and leaves scatter in its wake. Henry is backing up, but Dipper holds out a hand to stay him, signal to him that everything’s fine._

_Then there is a crash as four heavy hooves make impact on the Shack’s roof, so hard it bends around them_ <<for all its sudden volume> the noise fails to disturb Mabel’s sleep> _. An enormous deer now stands erect between the two men. The creature turns without lowering its great head, presenting its left antler (easily the length and thickness of one of Henry’s arms). Tossed over one of the many points is a long leather cord, from which swings a stone wrapped in silver wire. With all the care of one handling a hand grenade, Dipper removes the amulet and gives a slight nod to the animal. The deer nods back and, with another mighty bound, is lost to the trees below, shivering as it returns whence it came._

_“What-who-?” Henry begins, but already Dipper is in no state to answer his questions. He’d thought he would be alright simply passing the necklace over to Henry, but just making contact with it has put that hated pressure back into his head, as though he’d experienced a sudden shift in altitude, muffling and reducing the human’s words to incoherent gibberish. The demon had been turning, but somehow his movement has slowed to a crawl, like his revolution will take years to complete, this realization itself coming on slow as molasses through a mind suffocating under a blanket of static._

_All he Knows is, he would do absolutely anything, for anyone, to relieve this awful numbness, this sense of absolute disconnection from the world._

_“Dipper, please answer me, are you okay?”_

_Dipper blinks hard, as though waking up from a deep sleep. “Oh… yeah,” he says as he takes notice of Henry’s right hand gripping his shoulder, the other man staring at him with concern. “I’m sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out.”_

_“What was that, some kind of demon seizure? It didn’t seem like you could hear me.” Henry notices Dipper staring at the amulet clenched tightly in his other hand. “I thought it was doing something to you, so I asked you to give it to me and you just sort of handed it over.” Henry lifts his hand, as if to chuck the charm off the roof. “Should I—?”_

_“No!” Dipper puts up his hands in protest, but flinches back from actually making contact with Henry. “No, don’t, don’t throw it away. I brought that for you, that’s the present.”_

_“What is it?”_

_“You remember Morlayna?”_

_From the face Henry makes, it’s clear he wishes he did not._

_“You remember that thing she put around my neck that night?”_

_“This is that same thing?”_

_“Yes.” Henry moves to get rid of it again and Dipper flashes in front of him. “Henry, Henry, please! Don’t.”_

_“You gave it to me, right?” Henry stares the demon down, all trace of the fear from earlier vanished. “Give me one good reason why I should keep it.”_

_“Because…” Dipper takes an unnatural, but steadying breath. “Because it’s the best protection I can give you. As long as you wear that, my magic can’t touch you and I won’t be able to see into your dreams, so you’ve got total privacy.”_

_“You can’t seriously be thinking of giving this to me.”_

_“It’s only fair.” He can see Henry is still fighting with himself, so he continues. “Remember what I showed you. Think of it as helping me keep you safe. With this, we can both breathe easy that I won’t do anything to hurt you. Please, please understand. My sister loves you. I don’t want to ruin this for her. For either of us! Because I'd like a chance to get to know you, too.”_

_Henry chews his lip, eyeing the amulet as though it were a scorpion. He turns back to Dipper and puts out his other hand. “If I wear this, you stop looking into other worlds and you stop avoiding me?”_

_Dipper takes it. “Deal.”_

_The flames don't come. They don't need them. Not for this._

_“Okay…” Henry slips the cord over his head, holding up the stone to scrutinize it as he and Dipper both sit back once again. “What is this thing?” he asks, trailing a finger along the uninterrupted band of white around its pale grey surface._

_“What you call it depends on where you’re from, I think. I knew them first as wishing stones, but they’re also nightmare stones and lightning stones sometimes. You’re supposed to put them under your pillow or around your neck to ward off bad dreams. Morlayna heavily amplified its properties, of course. I really underestimated her.”_

_“Mabel’s going to notice me wearing this.”_

_“I’ll talk to her. I gave it to you, it’s my responsibility to explain. None of this is your fault.”_

_“I don’t think she’d take me using this very well." Dipper can hear what he’s really saying: I’ve heard the way she talks about your parents. He and Mabel’s disagreement over whether their parents’ behavior was understandable, acceptable, forgivable had only grown more heated over the years._

_“I’ll talk to her,” Dipper repeats._

_Henry leans back on his hands, lets a deep breath out._

_“It’s alright, you know?” Dipper says, trying to diffuse the tension. “We should just lay everything out now. Taboo talk time. What else would you like to know? You have a right to understand what you’re getting into with me around.”_

_“What was that earlier?” Henry nods toward the forest below. “The creature who brought this.”_

_“Chris? He’s our Forest Lord.” Henry looks at Dipper like he is expecting a joke, so he continues to explain. “If our forest ecosystem is healthy, he’s healthy; if it isn’t, he’s not. If you see him around, maybe give him a little bow to pay respect? Not that he's easily insulted or anything, but if he doesn't like you, the forest won't be safe to step foot in again and you could end up wandering its confines for all eternity, so like... no pressure. Oh, and if you put out a salt lick for him, you can ask him to hide something of yours deep in the forest. No one will ever be able to find it. I couldn’t take any chances with that thing.”_

_Henry nods. Nearly five solid minutes of silence follow, during which Dipper imagines Henry wrestling with the wording of his next question. Henry was careful that way, causing what few conversations he’d had with the man to flow much more slowly than those with his impulsive twin. He waits patiently to see what will out._

_“Your magic…” Henry begins finally, “You tell me it’s dangerous, but you clearly don’t want to hurt me or you wouldn't have gone so far to prevent that. Is it that you can't control your powers yet? Is there some sort of trigger I need to watch out for?”_

_Dipper grimaces, shaking his head. "No, that's not... You're making the same mistake that alternate Henry did. Nothing's forcing me to do what I do. These... 'episodes', he called them... they're not lapses in consciousness or control so much as lapses in concern. It's... kinda hard to explain."_

_"I've got all night,” Henry says softly, turning to look Dipper in the eyes. “I want to understand."_

_Dipper sighs. No turning back, remember? “I know. Okay. My magic… it feels like… like if you woke up one day and realized gravity isn’t real. That there’s nothing actually keeping you here on this earth but you. What would you do in that situation? Or, maybe that’s not the best way to... Okay, did you ever have a moment, when you were little, when you realized nothing is actually stopping you, except yourself? Like, maybe you’d always been told to be home by dusk, but one night when your parents were asleep you just walked outside, looked around at the dead streets or up at the stars and realized doing so was the easiest thing in the world. That one day you could run off, maybe join the circus, travel the world on a bike, and never see anyone you thought you loved ever again. It would be that simple, that easy, because nearly every limit you’ve come up against you realize is self-imposed.”_

_Dipper raises one hand, just looking at it. He almost expects golden sparks to still be jumping between his fingers, burrowing into his skin, but no, it’s all drained away. For now. He curls the hand into a fist. “When that Knowledge is in my head and that magic is at my fingertips, it’s like... it's like I realize that whatever I thought I was is just a choice. It feels like there’s nothing to stop me from turning the world upside down, from being anyone or doing anything, and everything I'd thought was important, everything I’ve worked to achieve, looks so small and pointless and_ boring _from that height.”_

_Dipper holds his face in his hands, rubbing at his forehead. His fingers brush lightly over his birthmark. “I dunno. Maybe if I were a better person, it wouldn’t make me so afraid.”_

_Dipper feels the weight of Henry's hand on his shoulder again. “I promised I’ll keep it on. You've got nothing to worry about.”_

_“Thank you.”_

_“… You know, I think I did have a moment like that. Where I realized there was nothing concrete keeping me somewhere I didn’t want to be and it felt scary to acknowledge.”_

_“Yeah? When was this?”_

_“When I was… I wanna say thirteen, fourteen maybe?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued...
> 
> Part 1 - Added 6/8  
> Part 2 - Added 11/5  
> Part 3 - TBD


End file.
